Ahead of this weekend's clash with reigning champions Wales in the Guinness Six Nations, Ireland captain Johnny Sexton has been defending his half-back partner Conor Murray.

The Munster scrum-half has again been selected to start in Saturday's visit of the Grand Slam winners to the Aviva Stadium with John Cooney on the bench.

Sexton says it's difficult to get the space in order to create chances at international level:

"When those opportunities present themselves, or if they present themselves, I'm sure he’ll be ready to go. But I don’t think they did last week. Some of that was the speed of ball.

"We were playing a lot of unstructured play.

"You know that phase of play where we were, came out, went down the touchline, got called back for a penalty for obstruction, probably we could have scored a try there and it was pretty good play.

"Conor has scope to go and snipe. But international rugby, it doesn’t always open up.

"It's not like provincial rugby or even some Heineken Cup games. It's proper Test match rugby. Last week was a proper Test match."

Speaking at today's press conference in Abbotstown, the Leinster out-half added that Murray's abilities have made him a marked man in big games:

"The biggest problem for Conor is he’s had those games where he's ripped up the All Blacks in Chicago, but then you become a marked man.

"Then sometimes the space isn’t there. It’s not as simple as 'why didn’t that work? He didn’t do it this game. He's played well. I watched his game against the Ospreys, he played well. He played really well last week. I’m sure he'll play well again this week."

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