{"id":455427,"date":"2026-02-03T09:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T09:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/455427\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T09:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T09:34:08","slug":"ireland-six-nations-team-announcement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/455427\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland Six Nations team announcement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Postpublished at 08:39 GMT<\/p>\n

08:39 GMT<\/p>\n

France v Ireland (Thu, 20:10 GMT)<\/p>\n

\"DamianImage source, Getty Images<\/p>\n

Five-time Six Nations winner Conor Murray admits he is “worried” about some of Ireland’s issues heading into next week’s mouthwatering tournament opener against France in Paris.<\/p>\n

Ireland, who relinquished their title to Les Bleus in 2025, will travel to Stade de France without several key players through injury, as well as the suspended Bundee Aki.<\/p>\n

France, who hammered the Irish 42-27 in Dublin last year, are also without a host of established internationals, but Murray feels Fabien Galthie’s side will have the edge in the French capital next week.<\/p>\n

“I think France will be a little bit too tough for the first game,” Murray, who won 125 Ireland caps, said on the Ireland Rugby Social podcast.<\/p>\n

“I hate saying that because I’m recently out of the dressing room, but I do think it’ll be a little bit too far to go.<\/p>\n

“I do, however, think they’ll put in a performance and we’ll see some sort of shape to what Ireland are trying to do and hopefully a few of the new guys come in and hold their head high after a game like that.”<\/p>\n

Murray added: “I’m worried now with the front-row issues and the loose-head situation and the way it ties into the story of the South Africa game [in which the Irish scrum was decimated during November’s Test in Dublin].<\/p>\n

“I’m definitely more worried now than I was a few weeks ago.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Postpublished at 08:39 GMT 08:39 GMT France v Ireland (Thu, 20:10 GMT) Image source, Getty Images Five-time Six…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-455427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}