No such thing as an easy group, says Kidney

Ireland head coach Declan Kidney believes the men in green will come up against some stern opposition in the pool stages of the 2015 Rugby World Cup despite avoiding the top three teams in the world in yesterday’s pool allocation draw.

Ireland were drawn in Pool D along with European counterparts France and Italy as well as “Europe 2” and “Americas 1”. The identity of these tier four and five countries will be confirmed after World Cup qualifying games.

Fourth in the world France form the Pool’s tier one outfit with Ireland ranked as the pool’s second tier side. Wales were the standout tier three team but Ireland got a favourable draw which pits them against Italy who were the tier three side when Ireland topped Pool C in the 2011 World Cup.

World Cup 2015 hosts England find themselves in the trickiest Pool, alongside Wales and Australia but according to Kidney there are no easy pools.

“I think as Richie McCaw said, there’s no such thing as an easy draw,” Kidney told IrishRugby.ie.

“There’s a lot of European teams in ours that we’ve had a history with in the past like France and Italy. Whether it be Romania, Georgia or Russia come through you wouldn’t be too sure.

“There’s an awful lot to play for and I suppose as we’re touring America too in June it will add a bit of spice to that tour.”

The former Munster coach refuses to view familiarity with Ireland’s pool opponents is an advantage, suggesting that it’s likely to ensure some tight and tense pool matches involving players who know each other well.

“It can make the matches that little bit tighter. The teams know one another so well, the players are so used to playing each other not alone at international level but at club level too and that can tighten up space.

“The order of the games you get is important too in a World Cup so there’s a lot of things to be done yet before you know the whole picture for yourself.”

Ireland have underperformed in recent World Cups, failing to progress from the Pool stages in 2007 while in 2003 and 2011 they slumped to disappointing quarter-final defeats.

Last year’s defeat to Wales in the knockout stages was particularly frustrating after Ireland topped Pool C winning all four matches including a memorable 15-6 victory over Australia at Eden Park.

Kidney admits Irish rugby has advanced to a point where simply qualifying for the knockout stages of a World Cup is not enough.

“Obviously you want to do more than just get out of your group but there has been other years when we’d be glad to get out of our group so I suppose that’s where Irish rugby sits and what we need to do now is not get above ourselves, try our best to get ourselves organised to see if we can get out of our group.

“I know in the last World Cup it took a very good performance against Italy in that last match to secure the pool win.

“There’s a lot of planning goes into this, making sure we have a strong pool of players because at any given time you can lose a player and you don’t want the loss of one player to upset your plans totally.”