Kidney’s Ireland calls worth watching

THE Triple Crown may have joined the RBS Six Nations Championship as the stuff of dreams for this season but rarely has there been as much interest in the selection of an Irish team as today’s announcement of the side to meet England at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday.

After the latest sloppy performance against Wales, coach Declan Kidney is under increasing fire and he will desperately want to put out a squad capable of ending the auld enemy’s hopes of a Grand Slam.

Many reasonable explanations can be put forward to excuse Saturday’s ineptness and the strange thing about it is that areas of the side which were causing most concern have been improved.

True, we suffered some awful refereeing in the four matches to date. But the jury is still out on whether the problems at scrum time have been eradicated. However, recent evidence suggests we are going in the right direction, although we will have more clearer evidence after the England game.

On the negative side, blaming the referee and his assistants has become a handy way of explaining why Ireland needed a last-minute drop goal to beat Italy, outscored France by three tries to one and still lost, played Scotland off their own Murrayfield pitch and only scraped home by three points and went down to Wales after a dream start.

Several Magners League matches over the past few years have been spoiled by the inefficiencies of Scottish referees and so we shouldn’t have been surprised by Mr Allan’s gaffe. RBS, the tournament sponsors, cough up sizeable prize money to each of the six participants in the championship with the biggest slice going to the winners and those next in line.

Although the picture won’t be clear until the weekend, defeat could have cost the cash strapped IRFU as much as a €500,000.

However, to dwell on that incident and use it to cover up all that went wrong in Cardiff serves no purpose. This is a poor Six Nations Championship — a point dramatically illustrated by the fact it will probably provide a decidedly limited England side with a Grand Slam. That Ireland should be among the poor relations in such company is irritating in the extreme.

WHAT we have seen so far is a bunch of players who don’t seem to understand the game plan and, if they do, haven’t much of an idea how to implement it. To go through the entire second half in Cardiff scoreless underlines the point graphically. Even more fundamentally, indiscipline has been rampant in the side and that’s just not acceptable from a handsomely paid group of sportsmen.

Kidney must have endured one or two sleepless nights of late. Nobody is more dedicated or more conscientious about his job. Nobody is more caring about the interests of his players or more anxious to provide the public with value for the large sums they fork out to watch the national side perform.

But he knows that his team has underachieved and under-performed and he will have dug deep within himself to know if he has been a contributory factor. Although he has many advisors, Declan makes the final call about the starting XV and replacements. It’s the manner in which he has utilised the latter that is getting him into hot water.

It’s as if he can’t get a handle on how best to use his bench. There were a few signs of this before Cardiff but the decision to replace Ronan O’Gara with Jonathan Sexton within 10 minutes of the restart was impossible to fathom. Ireland were four points ahead and O’Gara looked the ideal man to turn the ever worsening weather conditions to his team’s advantage.

Nor has Kidney done a great job in explaining his mindset, leaving one to suspect that he hasn’t yet figured out how best to utilise his two number 10s. He looks to be giving them what essentially amounts to a half match each. It isn’t the solution.

It also remains difficult to understand why he has persisted with Paddy Wallace when he already has either Sexton or O’Gara to fill the out-half berth. Wallace has been an accident waiting to happen for quite some time and to see him turn back into the Welsh cover when he had Keith Earls unmarked to his left was maddening in the extreme.

Fergus McFadden did nothing wrong and a lot right in his outings against Italy and France. He deserves a recall to the bench in place of Wallace.

However, there are much bigger calls to be made as we seek that redeeming result on Saturday.

O’Gara or Sexton? Tomás O’Leary or Peter Stringer? Tommy Bowe at full-back with Andrew Trimble on the wing instead of Luke Fitzgerald? Is it worth giving Leo Cullen his chance in the second row? Put Sean O’Brien at number eight for Jamie Heaslip?

These are some of the issues Kidney must address.

And that’s why Kidney’s response is awaited with the keenest of interest.