Jordi Murphy hoping for chance to bury his heroes at World Cup

It's more a challenge than a dilemma for Jordi Murphy to face the players he once looked up to when he was a teenager. More immediately to fight his way into a competitive Irish backrow is the first hurdle of several.

As a kid, while he looked up to Irish players such as Jamie Heaslip, Stephen Ferris and Sean O'Brien, Australia in the 2003 final against England were his team. Enough said there but if Ireland win through the pool stages and justify their ranking of two in the world, there is the chance at some point of playing against Australia. That would be a challenge Murphy would quietly relish.

“(David) Pocock, the guts of four or five years ago, maybe a bit longer, I would have looked at him when he first started breaking into Australia because he was absolutely outstanding,” says the Irish backrow.

“He is still obviously a great player. He has had a few injuries and he is coming back now stronger than ever. But around then he definitely would have been my number one.”

How the World Cup falls is in the lap of the gods. But kids are sponges and influences creep, sometimes by stealth, into adult play. Richie McCaw is another, who the Spanish born Murphy admired and in the Kiwi he may have an opportunity to try and bury another hero.

“If I was to look at the likes of McCaw and Pocock and their work at the breakdown, their poach, turnover ability and their conversion-rate whenever they do get to the breakdown, it is pretty outstanding,” he says.

“If I was picked and I did face them I would relish it. There is nothing better than playing with or playing against someone you would have watched when you were growing up, just to be at that level where you can challenge someone or play with them. Yeah I would definitely take it as a challenge and a positive one.”

There are obvious candidates for the plane ticket to London with Heaslip, O'Brien, Peter O'Mahony, Iain Henderson, Chris Henry, Jack Conan and Murphy all possible combinations. Tommy O'Donnell would also have been in there challenging had he not dislocated his hip, perhaps Ryhs Ruddock too.

Now there is a clear demarcation between Heaslip, O’Brien, O’Mahony and Henry as being the experienced group and Henderson, Conan and Murphy a younger cohort trying to stake a claim.

Henderson, respectfully referred to as the man child in the squad has an advantage is his second row ability. But all of them will claim ubiquitous talents and are adding all the time. Pegging them for just one position is like making a threat to their career. Murphy has played at openside flanker for Leinster but in the biggest game of his career this year started for Ireland against England at number 8.

“Joe is just a big man for...he always says we adapt to anything that comes our way because there’s not a script in rugby. You don’t know what’s coming ahead,” says Murphy.

“He would be a big man for expecting everyone to adapt to certain situations. It’s not really one of the things I’ve done very often before. Take, say for example, the front of the line-out defence.

“I did a bit of it last year. Before that I probably hadn’t done any, so it’s just one of those things I was doing against Wales and we just worked on it hard and got change out of it in certain areas.”

The sometimes mythical 'A' game, the phrase Tiger Wood's popularised before falling into a deep trough, is the Holy Grail of performance and they all need to show it or at least allow Joe Schmidt see they have it.

In the tight schedule between now and the end of the month the shop window in camp and in Test matches has narrowed. Murphy is nervous. Nervous in a creative, challenged way rather than hesitant and fearful and at 24-years-old a World Cup place would greatly strengthen his future.

“Yeah, obviously there are nerves but it’s no different to the Six Nations,” he says. “It’s one of those things. You want to be involved in the squad every single time.

“You have to focus on day to day stuff and just bring you’re ‘A’ game to training and if you are picked at the weekend, to the game and then hopefully you do enough in those little windows to kind of put the decision into the coaches mind to bring you. I feel you have to take it one day at a time and hopefully you have done enough by the end of it.”

In less than 10 days time he will know the answer.