August hurt is Kidney’s stimulus

DECLAN KIDNEY wants to use the pain of August’s four Test defeats to motivate Ireland as his squad switches into cup rugby mode ahead of next week’s World Cup opener.

Happily ensconced in their pre-tournament base in the resort town of Queenstown following their arrival on Thursday, Kidney and his coaching staff have implemented a swift change of gear to Ireland’s build-up to the first Pool C encounter against the United States a week tomorrow in New Plymouth.

A line has been drawn under last month’s four straight warm-up Test defeats, to Scotland, France twice and England, but the Ireland coach does not want them forgotten completely.

“You just need to move on from it,” Kidney said. “Had we won the four matches we would have to get over it too but we want to use the benefits of August; the hurt, the disappointment.

“If we had won all four there could have been over-confidence or whatever word you want to come up with for that.”

Kidney stopped short of describing the warm-up games as a phoney war but he did agree there was now a distinct change in emphasis as his players drew nearer to the tournament proper.

“I think we were honest in August, we said we’ll try and win the match, every match; we didn’t win it, we weren’t playing those matches for the sake of playing them or treating it in a phoney way.

“If you have England in your own back yard, you don’t hold back, so I just feel that now … that was ranking points and they were Test matches, there was pride and a whole lot of things. Now it’s cup rugby so, ‘phoney’ is a word I would stay away from for August but certainly you know that it’s all on the line now, starting Sunday week.”

Kidney labelled the past month as “disappointing” in terms of not getting a result and also losing Felix Jones and David Wallace to injury but stressed the positives.

“The gain of it was getting the 30 fellas match-fit. On average, it works out about 160 minutes [of game time] is what most fellas panned out about.

“We tried different combinations, if something happens here now we can deal with different combinations being thrown at us if we hadn’t done it.

“The alternative was to start the same 15 through August, would we have been better off if we had won all four games? We would be talking now about there being a chance of over-confidence?

“There were obviously things I wasn’t happy about but if that’s the case then South Africa have just lost three out of four — this is where we can be really Irish — New Zealand have lost the last two, I’d say that’s a national crisis.

“So we’re probably a bit more disappointed than the two of those because we lost four out of four but I don’t think they are wallowing in it and neither are we.

“You never want to lose a match, it does take patience but you have to have a belief too.

“When you know you are dealing with good players, it doesn’t take that much patience because you know that it will turn the corner.

“Having been in it for a while, I’ve been around teams that haven’t gone well for a while then something just clicks in and when you’re dealing with good players, you know that … we need to click, I wouldn’t deny that but we can click too, we’ve seen it year in and year out.”

Picture: Declan Kidney: Says August defeats were not ideal but lessons have been learned.