More than a practice run, insists Kidney

DECLAN Kidney was his usual calm, unflappable self after Saturday’s 55-0 thrashing of Canada at Thomond Park.

Long before a ball was kicked in this, his first game as Irish coach, he realised he was on a hiding to nothing. A big win would be dismissed as a foregone conclusion because of the poverty of the opposition; victory by a small margin or a defeat, would be greeted with derision.

However, it was perfectly understandable that much of what we saw on Saturday night proved little more than a practice run for Ireland although the coach didn’t see things in quite that light.

“I think that’s a bit disingenuous to Canada and to Test match systems,” he stated. “I think in Ireland, we have to strike a balance. We seem to do that in every aspect of what we do in life. Because we won by a lot, what good do we get out of it. We had a Test match, we did a reasonable job, we won’t be getting too carried away but it was a positive. Isn’t it much better to be like this than the other way?

“At the same time, we’re not blowing ourselves up about it. We won a game and it will only feed into a bit of confidence. From tougher games, you can learn more and I’ve always said you learn more in defeat but I’m glad we didn’t lose. It’s up to us now as coaches not to be fooled in any way but if you’re negative with players, they’ll look at you and say we won 55-0 and what’s wrong with that?

“One game is worth three or four training sessions. It will be a help because we’ll be able to highlight one or two areas that we really need to work on. In terms of building a panel, it gives everyone a sense of ownership of what the team is about so having the 22 on the pitch for 25 minutes or more will help build the squad ethic because it does take 22 fellows to win these matches.

“Going into Saturday, we have to have all the edge we can get. If you’re to believe the rankings, then if we did that to Canada, New Zealand will do the same to us. We’re seven places above Canada and we’re seven places behind New Zealand. The good thing about tonight is that there was a healthy respect about the way we approached the match. In the first half, we didn’t play the way we wanted to, rather we paid due respect to them and to the conditions. If we can bring that wisdom into our play, we’ll become a better side.

“What a game like this does is to increase the number of people looking for places and so in some ways it makes it slightly more difficult but difficult in a good way. Because if you have that, you have competition for places that can give an edge to Monday and Tuesday and that in turn can allow you to train better for the following Saturday. There will be plenty of debate in the pubs over the weekend to see what we come up with.”

Kidney says he will lean on the experience of the many players who were in New Zealand last June, pointing out that the match down there is still fresh in their minds.

“This is one of the games you get into this business for,” he enthuses. “This is your cup final, this is your Magners League-Heineken Cup all rolled into one when you play teams like New Zealand. It’s a huge challenge but we’ll give it a go. The All Blacks are the best team in the world, they’re the standard bearers for everybody.

“Everybody knows if they’re good enough to beat New Zealand in the World Cup, then they stand a chance of winning it. They’re the Tiger Woods of rugby and that’s the brilliant thing in the challenge for us this week.”

Pressed on what he thought of the younger players like Keith Earls and Robert Kearney, Kidney confessed: “I wouldn’t be great at the individual stuff except to say that they fed into the team stuff very well but if you look at the platform the forwards laid for them, it was quite good. There was a lot of aerial stuff as there is these days and they played their part. They didn’t run back just for the sake of running back.

“There were times when we had to be patient. They assessed the situation and played their important part but that does get the attraction rather than the hard grunt that went on in the forwards. When the squalls came in, we had to play a different type of game. All of a sudden, we were on a different planet and we had to put a shape on it that was necessary at that time.”

And a personal reaction to coaching a team for the first time in six months: “It’s a big change because I loved the games, week in, week out. That’s one of the things that had to go for this but the pleasing thing was to be able to walk into the dressing room and see the 22 of them sitting around and (questioning) themselves; just watching them do that makes it a good place to be. Some times we’ll win, some times we may not, but if we can make sure the opposition have to be good to beat us, that won’t be such a bad place to be either.”