Harlequins try king Cadan Murley has revealed goal machine Erling Haaland as his Rugby World Cup inspiration.
The uncapped Quins wing has opened up on watching clips of Manchester City hitman Haaland in a bid to sharpen his chances with England for the autumn’s World Cup in France.
Haaland’s remarkable 52 goals in 52 games in his maiden season in England fired Pep Guardiola’s City to the Treble. And Murley admitted studying Haaland’s body-language communication with City’s wide cohort of creative talents for tips on how to improve his rugby.
Murley racked up 15 tries in 18 appearances last season to top the Premiership scoring charts, and is now bidding for a World Cup spot with Steve Borthwick’s squad.
“Every sportsman looks at other sports stars and wonders how they can improve, and you’ve just got to look at his goalscoring record this season, it’s been absolutely incredible,” said Murley, who has made England’s 41-man World Cup training squad.
“As a United fan that’s pretty tough to say. You just have to look at those relationships, you can see, for a lot of those goals he’s been called a tap-in merchant, but you have to be in the right place at the right time.
“And I just think a lot of that is down to his relationships and his understanding of the players around him. He’s got some of the best assisters around him, [Kevin] De Bruyne, Bernardo Silva, [Riyadh] Mahrez, but he still has to be in the right place at the right time to know what they are going to do and how to finish, basically.
“So just watching him play, you can always see, he’s always so alert, he’s always live in the play and looking around for where the opportunity’s going to come.
“And a lot of wingers these days, that’s where a lot of your tries come. If you can read the game early and know who’s around you.
“At Quins, we’ve got Andre Esterhuizen and Alex Dombrandt, they are the two who are going to look for the offload the most, so if I can flood in around them, I know that’s when the touch is going to come.
“I know Marcus [Smith] prefers to kick one way, or when he looks a couple of times that’s when he’s going to do it. So little things like that, having those relationships with the players around you is massive.”
England’s World Cup training squad are hard at work at The Lensbury in Teddington, with four warm-up matches ahead in August before the global battle in France in September.
Haaland set a new 38-game Premier League season record of 36 goals as City overhauled Arsenal to claim the domestic title.
Murley topped the Premiership scoring charts this term, going one better than his second place last season.
And the 23-year-old admitted his assist kings at Quins have been England colleagues Danny Care and Marcus Smith.
Asked for his Harlequins equivalents of De Bruyne and Riyad Mahrez, Murley replied: “I can’t split Danny and Marcus I don’t think, I can’t split them, they both assisted me a lot this year.
“The important thing for us at England now is to build those kinds of relationships as quickly as possible.
“We’re all chucked together from different clubs and all play a different way. But even just getting to know people on and off the pitch firstly that will help.
“Then going through different clips from training, watching different clips of people during the training and analysis what they are thinking at different points, that can help as well.”
