Kidney focus solely on France

Declan Kidney doesn’t do surprises. Especially not when he has settled on a team he likes. That’s why there were no great gasps from the fourth estate when he named his team to meet France yesterday.

While the French will worry about the probable sub-zero temperatures for the game, the Irish coach masked any doubts he had with just one change to the starting XV. Keith Earls returns for Fergus McFadden, who drops to the bench to replace young David Kearney.

A reason for his calm presentation may well have been the quiet sense of satisfaction emanating from the Irish camp at Carton House after Stephen Ferris had been cleared to play, following his on and off field brushes with officialdom this last week.

Earls’ return, following his withdrawal last week, was a given and Kidney is not one to plunge into the reserves to make wholesale changes in advance of such a perilous RBS 6 Nations assignment. Ireland haven’t won in Paris since 2000 and the history there is littered with sad tales.

But Kidney was forced to field questions on the Welsh loss at the start of yesterday’s press conference.

“We’re within 48 hours of another match and the record books are going to show we’ve lost the last three times to Wales,” he said.

“Everyone knows what happened in two out of three of them. It is what it is, we can’t do anything about it. We have to move on. That’s the only answer I can give and we have a responsibility to the game too, so we just need to move on.” But wasn’t it an incorrect call from Englishreferee Wayne Barnes in the first place?

“We just have to move on. There’s nothing in it for us to be giving [out] feelings like that, we have to work with it, that’s the way life is.”

Irish skipper Paul O’Connell admitted it had been frustrating to lose in such circumstances, but backed Kidney’s view that mulling over the circumstances wouldn’t help Ireland against the French. The troops said a bit more, with Sean O’Brien standing firmly alongside his back row colleague and taking delight in Ferris’ name being cleared.

“My first reaction was that it wasn’t a penalty anyway,” he said.

“I was inside him and I justremember thinking it was a good tackle. Then the whistle blew and I was thinking, ‘what is he doing that for?’ It was a perfect tackle, good technique.

“He didn’t tip your man on his head or anything.”

Ferris’ Ulster and Irish colleague Rory Best was more concerned with what effect the concession of the penalty which cost Ireland the match would personally have on the number six.

“When you get moments like that, firstly you know the player is feeling it, so all you can really do is I suppose try to put an arm around him, especially with a guy like Stevie,” he said. “He’s a big physical player and he wears his heart on his sleeve, you just knew by his demeanour in the changing room that he was feeling it; not much point ranting and raving, these things happen, we have all been in that position where we feel an action we have done on the pitch has cost the team.

“The citing added to his woes, and there’s no doubt coming in on Tuesday he was very down about it. We were obviously inwardly quite confident that there would be no case to answer, but you just don’t know. Obviously it’s a very contentious issue at the minute and quite rightly so,because you don’t want to see anyserious injuries.

“However, it was a different Stevie on Wednesday evening compared to Monday and Tuesday and it’s good to have him back.”