Kidney: ‘we’ve got to be more ruthless and put away the scores’

THESE are “trying” times for Munster in every sense of the word.

Having failed to pick up a bonus point in either of their Heineken Cup matches against a limited Gwent Dragons, they were again grievously found wanting in this respect when decisively beaten by a superior Leinster side in Saturday’s Celtic League game at the RDS.

They are still clinging on at the summit of the league table but must travel to Murrayfield to take on their closest pursuers, Edinburgh Gunners, on Saturday night before facing Castres and Sale Sharks in Europe over the following weekends.

They could have no complaints with their 12-point defeat by Leinster, but it might well have been a different story had they been able to press home their supremacy in the opening stages when playing against the wind and again in the second half when Leinster were twice reduced to 14 men after Felipe Contepomi and Reggie Corrigan were yellow carded. But they were found badly wanting and left their coach Declan Kidney to say “we’ve got to be more ruthless and put away the scores.”

Kidney accepted: “We put on a lot of pressure early on and came away with nothing and then they managed to get a penalty, got a touch off it deep inside our 22 and scored off the first line-out. That was expensive and it was a hole we dug for ourselves. In fact, we dug a number of holes for ourselves. Then we clawed ourselves to a little bit of daylight and we might have got away with it until we gave away the score at the end and the scoreline is all that matters.”

Anxious to compliment Leinster for the way they had played, Kidney mused: “How much of this was due to the pressure that Leinster put on us and how much of it was of our own making are things we must work on over the next 48 hours. We won the toss and went against the breeze and were still well in it at nine points behind until they got the penalty at the end of the half to make it 12. These were all the holes we dug for ourselves - the timing of the scores and all that.”

Anthony Foley spoke for his Munster teammates when admitting that the extent of the defeat as much as the loss itself was proving hard to take. “It’s hard to take because with three minutes to go we’re going for the win and suddenly we’re conceding a bonus point, so, yeah, it’s hard to swallow”, he said. “It’s up to us now to regroup and focus on Edinburgh next week and try and get the New Year off to a good start. What’s happened in the past is that a result like this has actually steeled us and, hopefully, this will have the same galvanising effect because the next three weeks will more or less dictate the rest of the season.”

So where did it all go wrong this time in the eyes of the Munster captain? “In the first ten minutes, we had two or three opportunities of scoring tries and we didn’t capitalise on them”, he reasoned. “Then suddenly they came down our end and scored straightaway.

We battled back and kept in touch but made mistakes trying things, coughing up ball and that. You never knock a fella for trying but they capitalised on that and scored a couple of very good individual tries. They scored at crucial times and we can’t take all the blame for they played a lot of good rugby and defended well when we attacked. Fair play to them, the mauls on the line and the scrums afterwards would have tested any side. They got us on their home turf and did to us what we did to them at Musgrave.”