Kingston: give young players an opportunity
Kingston says it is crucial the IRFU — as they issued in their statement — “build a far greater critical mass of international standard players competing for places in every position on the Irish team”.
He welcomed, in particular, the third “strategic” goal set out by the IRFU, which is to create a more positive environment for younger players by increasing “opportunities for emerging players to perform competitively in an elite environment on a continuous basis”.
The former Munster hooker also wants the next dedicated backs coach to be Irish and feels the IRFU must be more proactive in bringing homegrown coaching talent into the professional game.
He did, however, criticise Ireland coach, Eddie O’Sullivan, for failing to develop a larger squad for the 2007 RWC due to a reluctance to blood players in the preceding Six Nations Championships.
“Coming up to the World Cup, there was certainly an opportunity to bring new players in and develop them in some of the Six Nations matches. Unfortunately we were stuck with the tried and trusted all the way through the last number of years, certainly when it came to Triple Crowns,” said Kingston.
“But if we decided the RWC was the most important competition, then the (Six Nations) Championship is the place to start blooding guys as opposed to playing our full team the whole time and then only having 19/20 players actually competing at a World Cup.”
Kingston’s main concern is that not enough indigenous talent is being fed into the provincial system — particularly form the All-Ireland League — and feels that, as a consequence, the pool at international level suffers. He also had harsh words to direct at Leinster’s attempt to bring in more foreign players to the detriment of Leinster-born candidates.
“The most important point to come out of this report is the need to start developing a bigger and better pool of players,” said Kingston.
“The reality of the underperformance at the World Cup is the fact that we just don’t have the quality of players that are required at that level.”
He added: “Unfortunately when we went to the World Cup, our pool was too small. Even though there was competition to get onto the squad, the reality is we have 20-odd players who can play at that standard. We need a wider base of players to complete on the World Cup stage when you have competitive games on a regular basis.
“Leinster this year were looking to expand the number of foreign players in their squad. If that’s going to be the situation, our basic pool of homegrown quality players is going to get less and less. I would be in favour of developing the players we have and start giving them more experience, as opposed to going foreign and getting these guys in.”
He said the fact the IRFU recognised that more homegrown talent needs to be produced is an example of transparency: “I know people were saying it wasn’t transparent but the fact the IRFU have actually done it is transparency. The recognition we need to produce better quality players is transparency as far as I’m concerned.
“There are good quality players, especially in the AIL, but there’s a block-out. Come the end of next season, when the provinces come looking for players again, they are not going to look to the AIL; they’re going to look foreign.
“If they’re not going to look at our own younger players, they’re never going to develop. There’s no point in hanging Eddie O’Sullivan out to dry for the quality of players coming through to him. In a way, what happened at the World Cup was a good stroke of reality for everybody really.”
Kingston welcomed the idea of a new team manager and a dedicated backs coach but urged the IRFU to seek Irish candidates for these roles.
“I would always have felt Eddie’s better off having a good-quality backs coach, so he can oversee the whole thing as opposed to being hands-on. Having a manager to overlook everything else that’s happening with the team might not be a bad idea, either.
“There are plenty of guys with huge international experience with Ireland. But very few of them have been attracted into the whole professional era. If Eddie is willing to start looking to get more experienced guys involved, I think there’d be a lot of guys in Ireland who’d be willing. I believe there is plenty quality in Ireland and it’s up to the IRFU to start looking for these guys, not go foreign all the time.”
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