Ireland will be without Jordi Murphy for the remainder of the autumn internationals after the flanker was ruled out for up to nine months with a knee injury sustained during the ground-breaking win over New Zealand.
The Leinster number eight, who has 17 caps for Ireland, injured his left knee as the underdogs despatched the back-to-back world champions 40-29 at Chicago’s Soldier Field on Saturday and Ireland confirmed the news before they called up six players on Monday.
Niyi Adeolokun, Tiernan O’Halloran, Dave Kilcoyne, Jack O’Donoghue, Darren Sweetnam and Dan Leavy have joined the extended 39-man squad as Ireland returned to training in Maynooth, Co Kildare.
A statement on irishrugby.ie read: “Jordi Murphy leaves the squad after damaging the ACL in his left knee which rules him out of action for between six to nine months.
“There were no other injury concerns to report from national camp following the game in Soldier Field.
“Niyi Adeolokun, Tiernan O’Halloran (Connacht), Dave Kilcoyne, Jack O’Donoghue, Darren Sweetnam (Munster) and Dan Leavy (Leinster) have joined the squad today at Carton House.”
Meanwhile, winger Andrew Trimble has admitted doubts haunted the Ireland squad throughout Saturday’s historic win as mental anguish plagued the underdogs for 80 minutes in Chicago, with Ireland having not won any of there previous 29 encounters with the All Blacks.
“It is so difficult to go out with a positive mindset and believe it is possible to beat the All Blacks, because hardly anybody does it,” he said.
“The All Blacks just hammer everyone they play against, they are a class side, and you are wrestling with yourself mentally to go out and try to convince yourself you are good enough to do it.
“Even when we had the lead there were doubts that it could unravel.
“In the back of your head you are going ‘hang in, please, hang in’ for 40 minutes.”
Despite having a couple of days to absorb the shock victory, which ended 111 years of New Zealand dominance over Ireland, the side is still coming to terms with their defiant performance.
“It feels pretty special,” the Ulster captain added: “It still hasn’t fully sunk in really, what we have achieved – we are pinching ourselves.”
But he cautioned against over-confidence in the event of the achievement, warning that an All Blacks backlash was now inevitable.
“It would be a mistake to get carried away and think we are better than we are,” he said.
“The only reason why we were good enough to beat the All Blacks is because we left no stone unturned, we fully bought into the game plan, looked at our set pieces, our breakdown, our shape.
“We did so much homework for the game. We’re going to have to do even more hard work, because New Zealand are going to produce a bigger performance.
“There is going to be a big backlash.”
Joe Schmidt’s men next face New Zealand again at the Aviva Stadium on November 19. First, though, they host Canada in Dublin on Saturday as November’s autumn internationals return to more accustomed settings.
The rest of the squad are in “good shape” apart from the inevitable fatigue, confirmed team manager Michael Kearney.
