2013 ‘horror show’ keeps expectations in check

When it comes to the RBS 6 Nations, Rob Kearney has seen it, won it and even flirted with a wooden spoon.

Which means as he embarks on his seventh championship campaign in Rome this afternoon, the Leinster and Lions full-back has been around the northern hemisphere block enough times not to get carried away by all the pre-tournament hype circling the Ireland team.

Kearney, who turns 29 next month, will win his 58th Test cap at Stadio Olimpico today, two years on from a game in the same arena that he describes as “a horror show” which became a defining moment in the history of Irish rugby. That 22-15 defeat to a buoyant Italy in March 2013 signalled the end for Declan Kidney, the coach Kearney won a Grand Slam with four years earlier, and ushered in the current incumbent, on whose shoulders rest a nation’s soaring hopes for success over the next nine months, both in the Six Nations and the World Cup.

Yet while Joe Schmidt has resurrected Ireland from the ashes of the Italian defeat that ended the Kidney era, landing a first championship since 2009 at his first attempt last year, courtesy of a last-day win in France and then further building excitement by delivering victories over South Africa and Australia in November, the full-back is on a mission to keep expectations on an even keel. Witness a masterclass in bubble bursting.

“I think we’re in a very good place,” Kearney told the Irish Examiner this week, before adding: “I wouldn’t by any stretch of the imagination be getting too carried away with what happened during November.

“I think South Africa were very below par that day and the Australia game could easily have gone... take Tommy (Bowe)’s intercept try for instance, that’s a 14-point swing around right there. Zeebs (Simon Zebo) got a very lucky bounce off Johnny (Sexton)’s kick, that game could have very easily have gone a different way. That’s why it’s important not to get too carried away with that. We were lucky in Paris to get that victory but we’ve developed really well and we’re playing some good rugby. I don’t think we’re behind from where we were last year but I don’t think we’re necessarily as far ahead as has maybe been perceived.”

And yet here we are, heading into the opening round of the Six Nations with Ireland installed as everybody’s favourites. The notion seems absurd when Kearney outlines the work he feels Ireland still need to undertake.

“What needs to be done — I think we need to continue to build our squad. We need to be able to go through 25 guys who are fully able to play Test match rugby, (we need) to develop our game plans, and we need to improve on some of the things that maybe we’ve been lacking over the last 12 months.”

Asked what exactly Ireland have been lacking over the last 12 months, Kearney responded: “I think some of our set-piece at times has let us down a bit. Some of our first-up defence, our tackle stats dipped a couple of times in games; closing out games when you get ahead of good teams like we were in Twickenham last year and not scoring in the second half, maybe the same applies against New Zealand 15 months ago when we didn’t score in the second half. Those little things, if you could change them by just a tiny little bit, they could have a big effect on the overall picture.”

The willingness to address faults and attempt to put them right seems to be a theme within the current Ireland squad, spearheaded by captain Paul O’Connell.

But Kearney insisted it is not a top-down trickle effect that hammers home the agenda for improvement.

“It’s not driven. I think we’re very lucky that it’s probably in our nature and it’s a little bit defined by what we do on a daily basis and how we train. We have that aspect of constantly looking to improve and maintaining a pretty high level of humility. As a result, I think it would be difficult for us to get carried away.”

Back in November, when Kearney sat down with the media following wins over the Springboks and Georgia, the wave of optimism led to comparisons between Schmidt’s 2014 side and the one he enjoyed Grand Slam success with in 2009. Kearney admitted Kidney’s side were guilty of not pushing on and developing their game after 2009 and that they lacked the mental capacity for the big moments, when the chips were down or an opportunity was there to be taken. It is put to him this week that the end result of that process of decline was the 2013 defeat in Rome, the moment when the team hit rock bottom.

“It probably was, for a number of reasons,” he said. “It was the end of the tournament, it was Declan’s last game, so any time you have a new coach come in, it’s sort of the building of a new era. When you leave that chapter behind, you start to look forward, so I would say that was a defining moment in the history of Irish rugby.”

The game itself was, he continued: “A horror show, it was honestly like something out of a horror movie. The injuries decimated us. We were playing pretty poorly, we had a lot of new guys on the team, Brian (O’Driscoll) got a silly yellow card and we may have got another one (two in fact, in the second half). Everything that could have gone against us did. But you have those days and it’s one of the very few days when the game’s over and everybody just hits the delete button and never think about it again.”

Perhaps it was another indicator of that mental fragility Kearney referred to in the autumn? “It was definitely mental capacity because the tournament hadn’t gone particularly well for us and we were struggling in some of our games. At the time we’d lost a few games and we were fighting it out for the wooden spoon with the French. Guys are going to start to doubt themselves and I’d like to think that while we’ve been working on ourselves as a team over the last couple of years we’ve been working on our mental ability too.”

Kearney points to a moment early in the Schmidt tenure, in November 2013, when mental fragility began to turn into what is now “a huge strength for us”.

“We have learned some hard lessons along the way. Without doubt the All Blacks in the Aviva was a huge day for developing our mental strength and it does come at a cost. I’d like to think in Paris four months later it came to the fore a little bit and you saw perhaps an insight into a different team than in the 80th minute four months prior against the All Blacks.”