Kidney gets serious as Wolfhounds get opportunity to shine against Fiji

Ireland will not be handing out caps for the Irish Wolfhounds-Fiji game at Thomond Park on November 17 but coach Declan Kidney stressed last night that he will be placing a considerable degree of significance on the fixture.

Kidney stated that the Irish side will be a combination of some established players and others with their sights set on greater things will line out against the South Sea Islanders.

The shock and disappointment of the 60-0 hammering by New Zealand in their most recent outing has worn off, leaving Kidney in a typically philosophical frame of mind.

“This job is such an honour that you don’t ever want to let anyone down,” he said. “When you lose a match like that, you certainly take a good hard look at what’s going on around you, yourself included, and I’m fortunate enough to know that it’s a thin enough line between changing something like that around and getting it right so you look at the previous week and wonder how good we could have been that day.”

Now the onus on Kidney is to put things right in the November internationals against South Africa on November 10, Fiji on November 17 and Argentina on November 24 so that they can be as high up the pecking order as possible when it comes to deciding the pecking order for the next World Cup in England in 2015. And he has no doubt that Fiji at Thomond Park has its place in the scheme of things even though it won’t have a bearing on that particular situation.

“There are no guarantees of what I can do for the Fiji game with regard to what the strength of the team will be,” he commented. “We’ll have to see how fellas fare in the first two months of the season. As we talk, some lads are just making their way back but there are four or five games to get themselves ready for selection and we’ll see how they’re going after the opener against South Africa.”

Even though no caps will be handed out, Kidney believes it has a major part to play in his preparations for the season, not least because there’s only one other A international this season and that’s not until the new year, when England come to Dublin.

“I’ll be treating it as everything and that’s why the management wanted to coach the team rather than back off,” he said.

“My understanding is Fiji will be putting out a full Test team so while it’s an uncapped international, we’re treating it as an international.

“Of the 15 who will play against South Africa, there will probably be some changes for the following week. I wouldn’t be tying myself into exactly how many I’ll make, because if for whatever reason, some guys need to play who played against South Africa, then they’ll play again. But there will definitely be other guys coming through as well. If we are treating it as an international match, you don’t want to be handing the jersey out easily so fellas are going to have to earn it.”

While the situation concerning Paul O’Connell’s fitness remains unclear, Kidney dismissed rumours the great second-row’s career may be in jeopardy because of a series of injuries.

“Paul will be back alright,” he insisted. “He had the knee injury going into June but that cleared itself up. That was fine. Sometimes the pre-season is a demanding time on their bodies so he’s had a few tweaks and it’s a case of getting everything right before he comes back.

“He’s right not to put a date on it, if you do that, you can stress the body a little more. It may be Munster v Leinster, ERC 1, ERC 2, but hopefully somewhere in that region. He trained with Ireland on Monday and for continuity care, came back down to Munster on Tuesday and there were no setbacks.”

The IRFU and Munster are certainly doing everything possible to make the Fiji game as attractive and amenable for the rugby public.

A three match pack costing €65 for adults and €44 for children will cover Munster v Edinburgh in the Heineken Cup, Ireland v Fiji and Munster v Zebre in the RaboDirect Pro12 league. Several other offers are now to be found on [e-mail].