Johnson learns a lesson from cool Kidney
“Martin, BBC Radio Wales...”
“What are you doing here?” said Johnson, quick as a flash.
Johnson’s side had just been minced in Dublin. Their Grand Slam hopes hadn’t survived the first quarter.
If Mary McAleese had delivered a loud cry of ‘in your face, carpet-man’, the humiliation could hardly have been more complete.
Yet he was frank and gracious in acknowledging the scale of defeat and managed a scrap of humour into the bargain.
When he walked into the press room, Johnson had the effect of a maths teacher stilling kids with the promise of double algebra, murdering the small talk. Now it seemed that Sir had a joke up his sleeve to break the monotony.
Declan Kidney — a real teacher in civilian life — followed Johnson and was his usual self.
Barry Coughlan of this parish, who knows Kidney of old, described him as “largely unemotional” in this newspaper yesterday. You couldn’t quibble with that description.
Our headline yesterday — “Kidney: we’ll keep feet on the ground” — only underlined that point. In bold.
If you’d walked in without seeing the game, would you have known who was the winning coach?
IT’S BEEN a tough few weeks for the men in charge of top international rugby teams.
Marc Lievremont called his French team cowards after they’d lost to Italy in Rome, while Andy Robinson had to bite his tongue after seeing Scotland capitulate miserably to Wales.
Warren Gatland, meanwhile, confirmed his ability to manoeuvre both size 10s into his gob with his attack on England hooker Dylan Hartley before England played his Wales side at the beginning of the tournament.
By the end of the Six Nations, his defence coach Shaun Edwards had been suspended by the Wales Rugby Union after an altercation with Fergus Connolly, Wales’ sports performance specialist from Monaghan.
The two men had clashed about the choice of songs after the Ireland game. No, you couldn’t make it up.
And finally, don’t forget that while Nick Mallett may be the toast of Rome after his side turned the French over two weeks ago, last month the South African had to apologise to referee Romain Poite after claiming the official had sent a letter of apology to the Italian Rugby Federation. The original claim was widely viewed as an attempt to place pressure on Poite ahead of Ireland’s visit to the Stadio Flaminio.
About all Kidney has on the charge sheet, in comparison, is a momentary snap at a TV reporter following Ireland-Wales. In the above context, that qualifies him as a Zen master.
Those deadpan press briefings lead to any amount of second-guessing among the corps of rugby writers covering them, and elsewhere, particularly when it comes to the out-half question.
Kidney wants this game plan, so Sexton is in; no, he wants that game plan, so O’Gara is in. There’s a deep-lying logic to the Kidney selections, you just have to puzzle it out somehow: on Saturday he said “the difficulty is who not to pick rather than who to pick”, which will keep those deciphering the hidden messages busy for another week or two.
The man from BBC Radio Wales made a decent point once Johnson had stopped slagging him, saying a Welsh player had said England had played all the rugby in the Six Nations. “It’s all rugby,” said Johnson. “Winning the breakdown is rugby. Kicking for the corners is rugby... playing rugby is about putting points on the board and we were second today.”
Johnson making jokes was a surprise. But Johnson making the case for Kidney’s way of thinking?
Never saw that coming.
