Oscar Wilde's writings rarely delved into the realm of athletic pursuit but he could have been talking about a particular breed of player across a whole prism of sports when he concocted the above line.

The natural sportsmen out there, those who rely on instincts rather than instruction, have always endured a rather fitful relationship with their public. Fellas who get by on guts alone are always forgiven their inadequacies. But those who rely on the grey matter are pillared when things don't go their way. It's the way of the world, a world that Geordan Murphy, as natural and instinctive a footballer that Irish rugby has ever seen, knows something about. Particularly in February of this year.

When the dissection of Ireland's last minute defeat to France at Croke Park was complete, and all the old wounds stitched back up, Murphy, it appeared, was cast as the one and only scapegoat. It wasn't a great mystery as to why. As he'll readily admit himself, his missed tackle on Raphael Ibanez which led directly to France's first try was fairly pornographic but in the grander scheme of things, Ireland didn't lose that match simply because of Murphy's error. The inability to secure the ball from France's late re-start for example, was not his fault. Nor were the two missed tackles for Vincent Clerc's late match-winning try. But despite all this, he wasn't picked to play against England at Croke Park and just to rub a bit of extra salt into his open sores, Eddie O'Sullivan dropped him from the 22 completely on the premise that Andrew Trimble gave him more options on the bench.

More options than a player who has played 15, 14, 13, 11 and 10 for his country?

It was bizarre reasoning, which gave some credence to the rumours that O'Sullivan and Murphy weren't exactly bosom buddies in-and-about the Irish camp.

And just when you thought his February couldn't get any worse, it did. With his services not needed by Ireland, he presented himself back at Leicester, his fulltime employers remember, and was told to take the weekend off. So he did exactly that, heading off to Riga to give his head a bit of a break and get away from it all.

Little did he know that his mini-break was causing serious ructions back home.

Why wasn't he at Croke Park for the game? Did he not care about Ireland?

Had he no respect for his team mates? Of course, the cries of the nation were misguided. Once he was outside the Irish 22, there was no room at the inn for him out in Killiney. He'd also given his two tickets to the game to his family. What else was he to do? But even with all that logic on his side, the criticisms did bother him.

"When I hear people saying things like that about me, I just realise how cutthroat the sport is, " he admits, speaking before yesterday's second test in Buenos Aires. "Criticisms on the field are fine, but I'm not sure if people realised that if you're cut from the team, that's it, you're not kind of kept around the place. To be quite honest, not being involved in that game was not a good thing for me and I really think that going to that game wouldn't have helped matters. I would have been sitting in the stand extremely frustrated and besides that, I didn't have a ticket for the game. I've heard bits and pieces of what people said. I don't know everything that was thrown at me, but I got the gist.

'It was a disgrace, ' and that kind of thing, but it just makes you realise how small minded some people are."

On the topic of the mistake, the missed tackle, that caused all the trouble in the first place, he's refreshingly honest and upfront about it. "I'm not the type of person to ignore it, " he says. "I made a mistake, I missed a tackle and it cost us some points.

But I did a lot of positive things in that game as well. I know I made a mistake and I hold my hands up to that and you have to take that type of thing on board. You get a lot of abuse for particular things in games but I think people don't really take into account what it takes to do positive things after something like that."

His club form with Leicester since the end of the Six Nations would suggest that his international set-back hasn't affected his game one bit and that makes it all the more remarkable to think that he's out here in Argentina having to prove himself.

Of the five Irish players who played in the Heineken Cup final, Murphy was the only one on duty last weekend.

Think about it. He played in a physically exerting cup final on Sunday, arrived in Buenos Aires on Tuesday morning after 15 hours in the air, travelled six hours to Santa Fe on Wednesday and had a brief run out on Thursday before coming off the bench on two separate occasions on Saturday, the second time playing in a position he hasn't played in since he was bursting pimples in front of the mirror. It might make sense for some young buck who the coach is trying to find out something about, but surely a player of Murphy's calibre deserves a bit more respect from O'Sullivan.

You can't escape the feeling that he's being extremely hard done by. As Manuel Contempomi commented in the build-up to yesterday's game, Murphy is a world class player, one of the few in the game that you'd get genuinely excited about watching. Girvan Dempsey has had a fine season for Ireland at full-back, and he's a fine player too, but that's not really the argument here. More pertinent is the fact that, going by O'Sullivan's Six Nations selections, Murphy is currently outside the Irish match day 22, never mind the starting 15.

It's a baffling waste of resources, all the more so when you take a peak at the guy's CV and realise pretty rapidly that Murphy is easily the most decorated player in the Irish squad. While a fair few of his international teammates have Heineken Cup and Magners League titles to their names, the full-back has five Premiership titles and two Heineken Cup medals on his own sideboard. In an Ireland team that are striving manfully to bridge the gap between potential and achievement, the one guy who's won trophies on a regular basis is watching in from the outside. It's a riddle that makes little sense and you get the sense that part of his problem is that he plays his club rugby in England. Word on the street earlier this year was that Murphy would join Munster at the end of this season but he's signed a new threeyear contract with Leicester, even though he did think long and hard about coming home.

"There was a temptation to come home, " he says. "I chatted to a few people, Leicester kind of said they were keen to hold on to me but they said that they understood the decision I had to make, as long as you let us know as soon as possible. I spoke to a few people at home, looked at it and kind of said, I'm happy at Leicester, I have a lot of good friends there, we've played some good rugby this year and I just thought that it's a successful team, why not stay and hopefully it won't affect me with international selection. But I know the situation. I suppose in a way I just have to keep playing good rugby. Eddie has already said that if it's a 50/50 call, he'll pick the guy playing his club rugby in Ireland. That's fair enough, I just have to make sure it's a 51/49 call instead."

Things haven't been easy for him. All you can hope is that if he sticks at it, he'll eventually be forgiven for that missed tackle. And some day, for his talent too.