Kidney: There’s buckets to work on and six days to do it

IRELAND coach Declan Kidneyrefused to be sucked into thedebate over Stephen Ferris’s last-minute yellow card that handed Wales the winning penalty yesterday.

Leigh Halfpenny slotted over the kick from in front of the posts to give Wales victory as boos echoed around the Aviva Stadium following Ferris’s sin-binning by Wayne Barnes. Yet while Ferris’s tackle on Welsh lock Ian Evans looked to have been harshly viewed by the English official, particularly after Barnes had shown yellow rather than red to Bradley Davies for a dangerous spear tackle on Donnacha Ryan, Kidney preferred to keep his counsel, just as he had done in last year’s championship when Mike Phillips had scored a controversial try from anillegally taken lineout. Had the referee been consistent with his yellow cards, the Ireland coach was asked.

“I’ve learned that you work on what you can control and leave the rest to the officials and to themanagement of that,” Kidney replied. “There’s nothing I can do about that. We’ve been in this situation in this fixture last year and we’ve lost a match. We just need to get ready for the next match in six days (against France). We’re not going to betalking about the past now. I’ll just leave that to people whose job it is to look after that.”