Players will learn from frustrating experience, insists Kidney

IRELAND coach Declan Kidney urged his players not to be too despondent after they endured a frustrating Setanta Challenge Cup encounter with the USA in California on Sunday night.

Not much went right for the Rory Best-captained Irish side, apart from on the scoreboard where a four-try haul helped them to a 27-10 win.

“It was obviously a very poor game and there were a lot of mistakes in it,” Kidney said.

“We said this tour was part of our World Cup build-up. Really it’s a five-game tour as ourselves, the senior coaches, and a lot of this squad will be involved together at the Churchill Cup. The players know themselves that they made some bad errors out there but you do need to start from somewhere and today’s the day.

“We won’t kid anybody, we didn’t improve (the ball retention) and other aspects from last week. They have to get used to fronting up week in, week out for international rugby and they’ll learn from this experience.

“We didn’t get too euphoric during the Six Nations and we won’t get too despondent after these matches.

“Hopefully we’ll get better games in the weeks ahead (in the Churchill Cup). It takes time. We need to be at our optimum for the World Cup in 2011. It’s like the Olympics, we’ve two-and-a-half-years’ preparation time for the World Cup.”

Tour captain Best, who scored Ireland’s clinching try 10 minutes from the finish, was staying positive despite the flat all-round performance.

“Obviously we’re not over the moon with the performance but you have to take it, especially with the slightly younger squad we have,” he said.

“We knew it was going to be tough, the US have a very good back row, they’re good at spoiling ball and working it to their advantage. We didn’t quite get to grips with that.

“Every time we got to six or seven phases we looked dangerous but we just weren’t able to get there enough. It was pretty frustrating.”

Best’s former coach O’Sullivan, who guided Ireland to three Triple Crowns between 2004 and 2007, was very pleased with the efforts of his American players.

“Our lineout didn’t function a lot of the time but the scrum did well and our defence was pretty strong throughout. Had we kicked our penalties and held out in other defensive situations, it might have been a tighter game.

“It’s a good foundation for us, this is the start of a busy six or seven weeks which culminates with two World Cup qualifiers against Canada.”