Win stats make painful reading for once-perfect fit Kidney

“Sometimes there’s a man — I won’t say a hero because what’s a hero? — but sometimes there’s a man. He’s the man for his time n’ place, He fits right in there.”

As Joel and Ethan Coen wrote about their slacker hero in The Big Lebowski, so too was Declan Kidney the man who was seemingly the perfect fit for Ireland after the Eddie O’Sullivan era. Kidney began his time as Ireland coach with a 55-0 canter against Canada in front of his appreciative Thomond Park faithful and delivered a Grand Slam less than six months later. He was a national hero.

That 2009 Six Nations was by some distance the high point of Kidney’s reign, a short period of success never since approached with isolated highlights such as the 2011 dismantling of an England team going for a Grand Slam or the magnificent World Cup win against Australia later that same year two honourable exceptions.