Kidney fails to spare wounded warriors

IT was wet, windy and miserable in Cork yesterday but the Munster squad, preparing for Saturday’s win or bust Heineken Cup clash with Llanelli Scarlets at Stradey Park, weren’t spared by coach Declan Kidney.

It was their first all-out session since Friday night’s Magners League defeat to Leinster and Kidney and his players worked on what went wrong in that game. Losing in the conditions prevailing at Musgrave Park on that occasion hasn’t upset the Munster camp unduly, rather it comes as a wake up call for the visit to a ground which has not been a very happy one for them over the past few years.

Brian Carney, who missed the Leinster game because of a knee injury, trained fully yesterday and will be available when Kidney announces the side on Friday. Kieran Lewis, his replacement against Leinster, would be likely to fill that role again if required while John Kelly and Anthony Horgan have also been called up along with James Coughlan.

Kidney acknowledged that yesterday’s session went on for almost an hour longer than planned because “we were trying to see how much we could learn from last week. When you lose, there’s always a little more to learn than when you win. Hopefully, we will put what we picked up from Friday’s game to good use in Llanelli”.

While nobody in the Munster camp suggests that Leinster didn’t deserve their victory they will argue that the conditions made the game something of a lottery.

“It was a very difficult night and so you can’t read a whole lot into the way the game actually went,” said Kidney. “It was the kind of night when you were better off without the ball.”

Nevertheless, the bragging rights are now with Leinster and one or two of their players haven’t been slow to hammer the message home. Hooker Bernard Jackman claimed Munster kept Leinster waiting for up to two minutes at the start of either half and that “they had tapped up the ball boys to give Munster a dry ball and Leinster a wet one. I watched the game against the Dragons and they were up to the same thing.”

However Kidney rejected Jackman’s claims. He said: “The teams togged out at opposite ends of the ground and we went out when we were asked to go out.It was a wet night and the ball was wet for everybody. I don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Munster PRO Pat Geraghty added: “There were six ball boys on duty. They are appointed by the event manager and received absolutely no instructions from the Munster team management. There were six towels. If you look at the tv coverage on Setanta, you will see that there was never a stage at which Bernard Jackman didn’t get a towel the same as anybody else. And could I make the point that in the horrible conditions, it would have taken a little act of genius to keep towels dry.”

It remains to be seen which Llanelli team turns up on Saturday — will it be the side that flopped so dismally at home to Wasps or turned Saracens over last week?

Kidney wistfully mused that “it just goes to show what they’re capable of doing. They are always a side we would respect.

‘‘They beat us in last year’s competition and if you look at our record at Stradey over the years, it hasn’t been great. So we well know they’re capable of putting 50 points on anyone on their day. That’s just the quality of the side and even in the matches that they’ve lost, they’ve run up a lot of points.”