Time for Kidney’s men to step up pace or season will be over

DECLAN KIDNEY and his Munster players have spent the last couple of days licking their wounds - most of them metaphorical, apart from Ronan O’Gara’s eye - after Saturday’s loss to Leinster at the RDS.

Losing to a team of such quality is no shame in itself, but the manner in which it was inflicted has to be a source of concern to Munster. Skipper Anthony Foley readily admitted afterwards that their season could be as good as over in the next three weeks unless they step up quite a few gears. On Saturday they meet the Edinburgh Gunners, their nearest rivals in the league, at Murrayfield, and then come the all-important Heineken European Cup matches away to Castres and at home to Sale Sharks.

Kidney isn’t panicking, however: “In a 22-game league, we’ve played Leinster back-to-back and we’ve each come away with five points. Obviously, we have to make sure it doesn’t hit our confidence too much, take a look at it, see what was under our control, see what Leinster did well that we could learn from, where we made errors and how we correct them.”