Kidney: Players need kid-glove treatment

Ireland’s battle-weary rugby players will need to be nursed through this week for Saturday’s RBS Six Nations finale against England, according to head coach Declan Kidney.

The fresh bangs and knocks sustained in beating Scotland at the Aviva Stadium last Saturday will be assessed when the squad regroups at Carton House today following a well-earned day off and the Ireland medical staff are expecting Sean O’Brien’s return to training tomorrow after he missed the 32-14 victory due to a skin infection on his foot.

“For those asking, I wasn’t at the game, I had to keep the foot up for the day, nearly there now, everyone played very well!” he tweeted on Saturday.

Having successfully managed a six-day turnaround, Kidney and his backroom team will look to take just as much care with a seven-day window in which to prepare for the St Patrick’s Day clash at Twickenham.

Ireland only factored in one main training session last week, opting for a light session last Tuesday before doing their core contact workout on the Wednesday and returning to lighter preparations for last Friday’s captain’s run at the Aviva. Even with an extra day to work, Kidney is keen to avoid overloading his players as they ready themselves for a fourth high-intensity Test.

“We’ll get a little bit more in but what I have to do now is talk, Jason [Cowman] is an excellent strength and conditioning coach, I’ll talk with him, I’ll talk with the medics and what you have to do is put everything into the mix,” Kidney said.

“So we have our framework, we know what we’d like to do but the trick at this stage is to knowing what you can afford to leave out. There’s heaps that you can do but we are where we are in terms of matches and what we need to do is just pick and choose and pick the right things to do.”

Kidney was delighted with the attitude of his players in managing themselves ahead of the Scotland match and the way they executed their tasks having trailed the Scots 6-0 after 10 minutes. Now the head coach wants a repeat performance.

“It’s just a case of recharging, a question of how we manage things between all of us,” Kidney said. “It’s the due diligence that they show in preparing themselves for the next one and this 24 hours [following the match] is vital.

“That’s why we have a lot of time for them. Sticking yourself into a cold bath for a couple of minutes isn’t the most enjoyable thing after playing a Test match but they’ve gone about that and they’re re-hydrating and eating the proper grub and it all goes into allowing the body to recover fast enough for next week.

“It is what it is. There’s other people in life in Ireland having to work harder than we are so we’ll just work hard.”