‘Win will only be of value if we win return game’

RIVAL coaches Declan Kidney and Pat Howard made hugely important calls before and during yesterday’s bruising Heineken Cup game at Welford Road.

Kidney wouldn’t admit he got it wrong in taking John Hayes out of the fray when Leicester were putting on fierce set scrum pressure at a key moment of the second half. Almost immediately, the Munster scrum buckled for a fifth time and a penalty try was the outcome.

And Howard wasn’t for conceding that he was guilty of a misjudgement by starting Paul Burke at out-half and not bringing in Andy Goode until the start of the second half.

Neither set of supporters would necessarily agree but, equally, the vast majority of the 16,000 crowd, should have been loud in their praise of how their teams performed and behaved in the cauldron that was Welford Road.

“We discuss things and these decisions always land on me”, said Kidney. “It was John’s first start of the season. If we had left him on and they had squeezed us over, it would have been the wrong call. You do these things on the spur of the moment and you don’t know if they’re right or wrong. Why was the penalty try given? Was it an individual’s offence? Was it a scrimmaging offence? I’m not sure except that the referee had his own reasons for it. I’ll let others decide whether it was because we changed props or not.”

You had to be in the cramped stadium to appreciate the amazing atmosphere. It was a situation in which a good start was going to be half the battle. And, of course, that’s what Donncha O’Callaghan’s remarkable try guaranteed.

“You can get blown away against English teams in the first 20 minutes but we were 10-3 up at that stage”, said Kidney.

“All their points came from penalty decisions. I’m not complaining about the referee — just stating fact. We pride ourselves on our discipline so we’ll take a good look at it. There are several areas where we can improve.

“The win will only be of value if we win the return game. It’s brilliant that we won but I’m not suggesting we were a far better side, though I think we deserved to win. We did so because we stayed with it. It was a day for smart, intelligent but positive rugby.

“That said, did Ronan try to run it out from inside our own half with three minutes to go. Ronan is a very good player, we just don’t say that very often in Munster. I’ve seen him play games like that before but today was a big day for him and that he did it is a sign of a good player. We’re not great for using superlatives in Munster but it was very good.”

Pat Howard is a typically cheerful Australian who claimed: “There were two chances of scores from each team. They took their two opportunities and we didn’t take ours. What happened for the first was that a ball got knocked out and turned over and it might be interesting to look at that.”

Meaning what, I asked? “Nothing”, he smiled. “It’s a game of small margins. We were playing reasonably well in the first half. Corry had a chance but couldn’t hold it. They took their two tries, we didn’t and that was the game. You’ve got to play the conditions. I thought our line-out and scrum did very well.”

However one has to wonder if he was happy with his decision to prefer Burke to Goode at out-half. “Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I thought Burkey’s control gave us the opportunity make those kicks. We didn't’ know our line-out would go as well as that and it brought Goodey into the game a little bit more. I didn’t think it was a massive issue.”