Kidney eyes the bigger picture
“I’m glad we’re not playing them next week,” he claimed, but surely that must have been tongue-in-cheek after the manner in which Leinster were made to look so ordinary.
A full house turned up at Musgrave Park already a little downbeat over the absence of injured key players Paul O’Connell, Peter Stringer, Anthony Horgan and Christian Cullen. And they would have been fearing the worst when informed that John Hayes with an infected neck gland and centre Trevor Halsted, troubled by a shoulder muscle injury, were last -minute absentees.
They needn’t have worried, because Mick O’Driscoll, Tomás O’Leary and Federico Pucciarello stepped up to the plate in style.
Replacing O’Connell would have given Kidney a king-sized headache last season. Now up steps Mick O’Driscoll, lured home from France. Yesterday he showed the benefits of his couple of seasons at Perpignan as he dominated the line-outs and also punched his weight in the rucks and mauls.
One has no quibble with his nomination as man of the match, but several others had reason to feel disappointed. Chief among them was Tomas O’Leary, thrown in for his first start at this level in place of Stringer. Any misgivings about his inexperience were dispelled as he used his speed and deceptive angles of running to spread terror in the Leinster defence.
As he visibly gained in confidence, O’Leary grew more and more cheeky while the speed and accuracy of his passing was just as encouraging, having been faulted in the past for a perceived weakness in this area.
Then there was the Argentine/Italian prop Pucciarello. As with O’Driscoll and O’Leary, he was never regarded as a first choice but the manner in which he stood in for Hayes yesterday could hardly have been more impressive. He gave nothing away in the tight and with O’Driscoll, Donncha O’Callaghan and Alan Quinlan ruling the line-out, it meant that Munster enjoyed plenty of first phase possession.
This gave O’Gara and the marauding Alan Quinlan, Denis Leamy and Shaun Payne plenty opportunity to show off their skills while John Kelly capped another excellent all-round performance by making a superb try out of virtually nothing. Australian coach Michael Cheika was at pains to explain away his Leinster flops.
“If you give good opposition the kind of opportunities our mistakes allowed them, they will kill you,” he accepted. “They scored 21 points as a result of our errors. We were okay in the first 20 minutes but then mistakes combined with indiscipline cost us.
“I felt the referee lost the handle on the game, but so did we. We won’t see this as a step backward, we’ve just got to work on taking the lessons from this game and build from there.”
Cheika has a Celtic League game against Cardiff Blues next weekend to help restore morale before tackling Bath in the Heineken Cup at the RDS a week later.
Munster, for their part, have no game and will instead concentrate entirely on Friday week’s clash with Sale Sharks at Edgeley Park, Stockport.
Kidney emphasised that “all we’re doing with the Celtic League is talking it down. The Celtic League is a very tough, physical place to play.
“Players were at it hammer and tongs and I don’t see any of them holding back in any of the matches.
“Our best chance of doing well in the Heineken Cup is if we pay proper respect to all the games instead of going from a certain type of performance up to a much higher performance in a few weeks. Today was encouraging but we would hope to maintain that level no matter what competition we’re in.”
He paid due praise to O’Leary and O’Driscoll but no more than that, and as for the team performance, not even a 33-9 thrashing of a star-studded Leinster XV could force him to insist other than “Tomás did well. He just went out and did what he’s been doing in training and you could ask for no more than that. He’s back after a long lay-off with an injury and there’s a bit of freshness about him.
“He’s had a good game today and he’s willing to learn and I’m sure he’ll do that over the coming years.”
Kidney was never going to be drawn on the unfortunate remarks attributed to Leinster assistant coach David Knox which essentially accused Munster of playing a 10-man game.
He quipped: “I’m not sure what kind of game we play. You always play to your strengths and you try if you can to spot any weaknesses in the opposition.”
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