Kieran Marmion steps up to target and rebuffs all attacks

As Kieran Marmion tells it, targeting players and sledging is another part of the modern game to accommodate.

With Rory Best laying down the law to referee Jerome Garces about the welfare of his players and where his responsibility as a captain begins and ends, Marmion's first start in a Six Nations match could, had he allowed it, have been perilously fraught and uncomfortable.

Costly penalties from England that Johnny Sexton ensured bit them hard proved invaluable at the end. But Marmion's relative inexperience on a Six Nations stage profiled him as a possible vulnerable link in the Irish backs.

It turned out to be misplaced even though the scrumhalf was told on Thursday just before the Irish training session that Conor Murray had not passed a fitness test and he would partner Sexton.

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“I knew they would probably be trying to put me and Johnny under pressure,” says Marmion. “I could definitely hear them at all the rucks and stuff, giving me a good bit of verbal pressure. The thing is to just try and ignore that. I knew it was coming and you just have to get on with it and do my job.

“You can hear them shouting: ‘I’m all over him, I’ve got him.’ I guess it’s just a way of putting people off and you just have to try and block that out.”

Late hits

The marginal and late hits on Sexton have now become so routine and predictable that England blindside Maro Itoje was lucky to escape a card. Schooled on Saturday in certain aspects of backrow play, England's talented but this time ineffective flanker was one who had eyes on the Irish outhalf.

“It probably worked in our favour,” says Marmion, who had a long red scrape running down the right side of his face beside an array of scuff marks.

“They were giving away cheap penalties and Johnny has to try and wear that and get on with it. He’s a professional who had been in the game for so long, he knows what’s coming. He gets on with it really well.”

It was Marmion who brought an end to what was England's best move of the match. Owen Farrell measured a beautifully angled first-half kick over the advancing Irish backline.

England winger Elliot Daly cut through and caught the ball at speed, bursting into clear space. It was the scrumhalf who scrambled across first to bring a halt to England opening up their backline.

“I was probably a bit slow getting to the chip, actually,” he confesses. “I should have got to the ball on the full. But I guess he just caught my eye line pretty late and I just had to dive out and try to get him.”

It was one time England expanded in an otherwise ferociously tight contest of mite and muscle. Marmion’s bruising testifies to heavy sparring, a collision-based game that not only could he not avoid but needed to embrace. It was the most physical match he has ever played in his 12-cap career.

‘Understated’

“It was physical,” he concedes. The most physical? He thinks for a second and answers understated and quietly.

“Probably. You know when you’re going to get hit,” he says. “There’s a step up in pace as well, it’s a big change. You’re blowing a lot harder and you just have to fight through that.”

For Marmion the summer tour to Japan gives further opportunity. A fit Murray should go with the Lions. While it difficult now to see a chink in his game that might allow Marmion a bigger peek, there is awareness that the game always provides openings. In that it never fails.

“With Conor in front of me, playing so well, I understand that,” he says stoically. “I just have to keep training, keep trying to . . . get an opportunity.”

“Conor came up to me after training and told me best of luck, to give it my all. We both have different strengths, I tried to play my own game, it was tough out there, with the wet ball and the wind, I didn’t get to do as much as I wanted. But it was about fitting in.

“I was under no illusion. I knew I had a lot to try and live up to,” he says. “We had to make sure we defended well, looked after the ball. I think we did that pretty well.”

An obvious strength is how differently Marmion plays the position to Murray. There’s contrast. He has light feet and crisp passing and while not as much a physical threat a willing, fearless streak makes up the ground there.

Nervous yes, but as soon as the game kicks off, he says softly, they leave.

“I guess then,” he adds. “It’s just a game of rugby.”