Kidney hails O’Gara milestone as O’Mahony makes entrance
O’Gara wrote a new chapter in his illustrious career when he came on to win his 118th Irish cap and push him past injured skipper Brian O’Driscoll in appearances while Cork Constitution youngster Peter O’Mahony became the new kid on the block when sprung from the bench.
Although given no opportunity to build on his colossal points tally of 1,075, O’Gara slotted in seamlessly as Kidney moved bang-in form Sexton to centre.
“Firstly, I’d just like to congratulate Ronan; it’s a fantastic number of caps he has and I’m sure there are a few more to come too.”
Praising O’Mahony, Kidney figures the youngster is another of a new brood Ireland will rely on in the future.
“Things will only be cyclical if you don’t plan for the future, so it’s important we have guys coming through. Peter made that big step and the first cap is always a huge step in a man’s life.
“Conor Murray did it in August, Donncha Ryan is getting more and more caps all the time, Sean Cronin as well. We need that. We need the mix of experience and youth. It’s vital if we’re to be performing at this level to have guys breaking through. We had a situation with the Wolfhounds match before the start of this series to see how guys would cope with the stresses of international rugby and that was good.
“Sometimes in club or provincial rugby you have a period of time together that you don’t have at this level, it can be thrown at you in a week and you have to see how people react in those environs. But for Peter he has had the benefit of being in camp for four or five weeks. The more sessions and training he does, hopefully the more comfortable he gets and hopefully today will be the first of many.”
Kidney, never one to get carried away in victory, was pleased overall.
“I was most pleased that we played for 80 minutes, that we stayed at it and that we were able to adapt at half-time and be able to understand, that whereas we had been playing a lot of football, we were playing in areas where if we made a mistake it was going to give them a shot at goal or a try like they got in the first half.
“We made a few errors but they didn’t cost us as much. They didn’t put us under as much pressure and then we were starting to finish things off. We have been adding to our game. You don’t come back from a World Cup and try to do the same thing. We have been adjusting how we play and the more the players run together the more comfortable they will be looking at it. We are providing the ball carrier with a few more options and it was probably more apparent today.”
What he didn’t like was self-imposed pressure in the first half.
“After the Wales match, we said we wanted to look at things that were under our control to fix, some of those we fixed today and there are others that we are just working on.
“It is not as simple as just getting the ball in your own half and kicking it. That doesn’t work anymore, you just have to work on the team ethic as to how to move out of it.”
Inspirational skipper Sergio Parisse was able to figure out how Ireland managed to turn it around, but acknowledged they played a different side after the break.
“We were frustrated with the score at half time because we missed some chances,” he said.
“It was a blow to give them another try before half time. In the second half it came down to a forward battle and Ireland picked up their game, and made us pay for mistakes.”
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