{"id":22859,"date":"2025-11-25T19:14:05","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T19:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/ireland-rugby-social-conor-murray-selects-the-best-xv-he-played-with-in-latest-bbc-podcast\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T19:14:05","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T19:14:05","slug":"ireland-rugby-social-conor-murray-selects-the-best-xv-he-played-with-in-latest-bbc-podcast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/ireland-rugby-social-conor-murray-selects-the-best-xv-he-played-with-in-latest-bbc-podcast\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland Rugby Social: Conor Murray selects the best XV he played with in latest BBC podcast"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">During a distinguished playing career, former Ireland, Munster and British and Irish Lions scrum-half Conor Murray played alongside some legendary figures in the world of rugby union.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sounds\/play\/p0mjrkk8\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">special edition of the BBC&#8217;s Ireland Rugby Social podcast<\/a>, Murray selects the best XV from all the players he lined up with during 15 years participating in the sport at the highest level.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 36-year-old racked up 125 caps for Ireland, made 207 appearances for Munster and played eight Tests for the Lions across three tours in 2013, 2017 and 2021.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In his own position of scrum-half, Murray selected former Wales number nine Mike Phillips, one of three Welsh players in his XV.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Murray says he learned much from watching Phillips, &#8220;taking in as much information as he could&#8221; as part of the Lions squad in 2013.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A couple of Englishmen are also included in the selection, with the remainder of the team made up of his former Ireland team-mates.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Murray explains on the podcast that he believes Sam Warburton is worthy of his place in the side at open-side flanker because of both his performances and his leadership abilities.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Warburton led the Lions to a series victory over Australia in 2013 and a drawn series with New Zealand four years later.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Welsh forward had natural leaders like Brian O&#8217;Driscoll and Paul O&#8217;Connell in the Lions ranks when he took up the reins for the 2013 tour at just 24 years old.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;To be honest, I&#8217;d say it was hard for him [to win everyone over at first],&#8221; said Murray. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;You had Paulie [O&#8217;Connell] and Drico [O&#8217;Driscoll] and players who had been on Lions tours before and people naturally looked up to them. They didn&#8217;t have to earn people&#8217;s respect. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;They looked up to Sam too but he was a new young captain, young to be captain of a British and Irish Lions team.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/c9qelex27w5o?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During a distinguished playing career, former Ireland, Munster and British and Irish Lions scrum-half Conor Murray played alongside some legendary figures in the world of rugby union. In a special edition of the BBC&#8217;s Ireland Rugby Social podcast, Murray selects the best XV from all the players he lined up with during 15 years participating [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22860,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22859"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22861,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22859\/revisions\/22861"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}