Kidney eschews the platitudes

THE patient is alive.

And kicking.

This was a defeat, a 23rd in 24 attempts against New Zealand, that will have stung Declan Kidney and his players, there is no doubt.

Yet, after eight months of spluttering and wheezing dating back to the Six Nations defeat to Scotland at Croke Park, Irish rugby finally rose from its bed and took its first steps back to health.

Not for 80 minutes, as Kidney had sought, and not without some moments of poor decision making and shaky set-pieces, but compared to the sickly displays against South Africa and Samoa, this was a vibrant, full-blooded performance from which Ireland can take plenty of positives.

Were the All Blacks 20 points better than Ireland? Probably, but not just Ireland. They are clearly the best team in world rugby by a long way just 10 months out from a World Cup on home soil. And there is much in the mental strength and clear thinking displayed by Graham Henry’s men for Ireland to learn from.

“The more we play against these guys the better we will be,” Kidney said afterwards. “Since June, what have we done? We’ve played them twice, Australia, South Africa. A lot of younger players have picked up an awful lot of game time against them. Just take (hooker) Seánie Cronin for instance, what he’s done. You can’t buy experience, you have to build that up, you have to go through it, what it takes is time to get there.”

Keeping the ball would be a start, with New Zealand enjoying 70% of possession as the Irish persisted in turning the ball back to the visitors with a series of ill-advised kicks and chips.

Yet Ireland had gone 13-9 ahead on the half hour, much to the delight of the majority of the 46,302 crowd at the Aviva Stadium when Stephen Ferris touched down after collecting an obvious forward pass from Jamie Heaslip.

That appeared to merely fire up the All Blacks who won the game in a 15-minute spell either side of the interval with tries from Anthony Boric before half-time as well as Kieran Read and Sam Whitelock straight after, setting up Graham Henry’s 100th Test victory as a coach.

Those 24 unanswered points put the contest beyond the home side but Ireland, to their credit, did not give up the cause. Heaslip set pulses racing with a charge upfield from Ireland’s 22 to New Zealand’s and then came a piece of Brian O’Driscoll brilliance as the captain scooped up a loose ball one-handed and flew over the line for a 56th-minute try.

There followed some spirited and tireless Irish defensive work that kept the All Blacks at bay for 30 minutes – Irish substitute Keith Earls’ try over-ruled by the video official during that spell – before the green line was finally breached in the last minute. When it came, it was in relatively soft circumstances as the Irish backs failed to react to a quick throw in on the left and New Zealand set up Read again in the opposite corner.

It was a sloppy ending but, unlike against the Springboks two weeks earlier, not a fair reflection of the overall performance – even if Kidney was measured in his praise following a fifth defeat in six Tests.

“I suppose (there is) encouragement, but I think too much of them just to let them away with that,” the coach said. “Then we go into the old things like ‘it was a great performance’. We’re too good a country to buy into that. We need to work on things ourselves. I don’t want to sound like a broken record. It’s in our own control, if you look at the turnovers, just getting a few simple things right, I think we can make a stock change.

“We put our defence under a lot of pressure. Was it 70-30 possession? We need to make it 50-50.”

Ireland are heading in the right direction though, and have one more game this autumn, against old foes Argentina next Sunday, to get back to winning ways ahead of the Six Nations next February. They will definitely have to do so without hooker Rory Best, who requires surgery on a fractured cheekbone, and possibly Brian O’Driscoll, who had his shoulder X-rayed straight after the game, while Rob Kearney (knee), Luke Fitzgerald (knee), Tommy Bowe (calf) and Gordon D’Arcy (calf) all need injuries assessing.

Such is the collateral damage from a high-octane collision with the All Blacks. There should not be too many mental scars though, once the disappointment of defeat has subsided.

Argentina’s 15-9 defeat to France on Saturday, with all the points coming via the boot, suggests it will be a very different sort of challenge in the final autumnal Test, but the areas for improvement will remain the same. Ireland have shown they can adapt to a more expansive game but though opportunities are being created, they now need to be taken. The core skills are there but decision making could be much better and set-piece play has to improve.

“That’s the benefit of this series,” Kidney added. “It’s brilliant to have a four-game series in that we want to learn more about ourselves. But you want to be winning games in the present, you don’t want to be building for the future all the time, you want to be winning matches now and then have 1% of an eye on next year as well.

“We are learning as we go along. We’ve been four weeks in camp. We’ve another week to go. It’s a different lifestyle and you have to have a strength of mind to stay with that. Sometimes they’re not playing every week but they can get called upon and the only way you find out the strength of your squad if by experiencing it and that’s what all of the lads are doing at the moment.”

IRELAND: R. Kearney; T. Bowe, B. O’Driscoll, G. D’Arcy, L. Fitzgerald; J. Sexton, E. Reddan; C. Healy, R. Best, T. Court; D. O’Callaghan, M. O’Driscoll; S. Ferris, D. Wallace, J. Heaslip.

Replacements: R. O’Gara for Kearney (75), K. Earls for Fitzgerald (47), P. Stringer for Reddan (64), S. Cronin for Best (22), J. Hayes for Court (64), D. Toner for M. O’Driscoll (50), D. Leamy for D. Wallace (64).

NEW ZEALAND: M. Muliaina; C. Jane, C. Smith, M. Nonu, H. Gear; D. Carter, A. Ellis; T. Woodcock, H. Elliot, O. Franks; A. Boric, T. Donnelly; J. Kaino, R. McCaw, K. Read.

Replacements: S.B. Williams for Nonu (59), A. Mathewson for Ellis (59), A. Hore for Elliot (59), J. Afoa for Franks (66), S. Whitelock for Donnelly (40).

Referee: M Jonker (South Africa).