Kidney: still a gloss on the crown

THERE quite a few in Irish rugby circles who believe the Triple Crown doesn’t count when it comes to being acclaimed on the world stage.

They maintain it doesn’t matter how often you win it — and it will be Ireland’s for the fifth time in seven years should they beat Scotland at Croke Park — there are no world ranking points involved. It counts for nothing on the other side of the world.

But Ireland coach Declan Kidney and captain Brian O’Driscoll last night both rubbished the notion that it’s only the Six Nations Championship that really counts and barring a miracle, that’s going back to France on Saturday evening. Instead, Kidney and O’Driscoll emphasised the Crown’s considerable importance with Kidney underlining his argument by naming an unchanged 22 for the visit of the Scots.

“I certainly don’t think the team is blasé in any shape or form about the enormity of winning silverware and it’s a common goal whenever you get the opportunity,” said O’Driscoll.

“Putting it in the final context, it’s exactly the way we need to approach the game. It’s a one-off and with a bit of luck we will put in the kind of performance that we feel we still have in us to attain that silverware. And it would be disrespectful to those players who never won a Triple Crown and spilled a lot of blood in trying to do so. I realised the enormity of it when we won the first one in 2004. It had been a long, long time since we as a country had done it.

“You always set your targets as high as you possibly can and that’s the Grand Slam. If you can’t have that, then it’s the championship and the Triple Crown and we are now in a position to win something that we have targeted from the outset.

As O’Driscoll pointed out with a cheeky smile, Kidney is old enough to remember all the years — 1985 to 2004 — when Ireland never won a Triple Crown and at a time when many of our greatest ever players wore the green jersey.

“To me, it’s huge”, said the coach. “I’ve seen teams spill their guts out and never get anything out of it. Coming into the job, the team was supposed to be getting old and I thought, it would be brilliant if I could be involved with winning anything let alone a Triple Crown. It’s something you dream about being involved in and to be involved in it on home soil and on such a special occasion.

“It’s one of those romantic things. How could you orchestrate this — playing your last match in Croke Park for a Triple Crown. I think the genuine sports supporter would never put it down to getting carried away with last year’s Grand Slam. I think we have also learned not to take things for granted. The economy took a hit in a day, maybe we were taking that for granted and it’s gone. This could be gone.

“We mightn’t be in a position to win a Triple Crown again for years. Scotland are getting better and better, how lucky we were to get through the match against England, we had a good day against Wales but I’ve seen some of those games at Cardiff Arms Park when we took a few thumpings and that wasn’t due to any lack of effort by the players. We are fortunate to have a good bunch of players and it would be a terrible shame to let the opportunity slip by because they are rare enough in life.”