INTERVIEW/IRELAND HEAD COACH:It's a year since Declan Kidney took over as Ireland's head coach and, needless to say, he has not changed a jot despite all the success, writes Gerry Thornley
DECLAN KIDNEY is undoubtedly an intelligent man, but winning the Grand Slam in his first year might be construed as being a little silly – akin to Orson Welles making Citizen Kane as his first movie. Toward the end of a career that had gradually and irreversibly declined, Welles reasoned: “I started at the top, and worked my way down.”
We trust Kidney won’t be paraphrasing Welles further down the track. Nevertheless, expectations have been raised, one imagines, within the squad as well as publicly. As ever, though, the way he sees it, a small part of Kidney’s remit is to manage that, or at any rate try to keep it in perspective, in part so that we all enjoy the ride more as well.
On the face of it, Ireland embark upon a new season having had a collective mental lobotomy. Where a year ago they were clinging on to ninth place in the world after a run of two wins (at home to Italy and Scotland) in seven matches and a lingering hangover from a demoralising World Cup, they come into this autumnal series on the back of an eight-match winning run which, of course, encompassed the Grand Slam.
Kidney being Kidney, a line of questioning on foot of such premises is shredded virtually from the off. All has changed?
More like nothing really. Confidence shouldn’t be as low now but, he reasons, that confidence is often inextricably linked with momentum.
He details all the water that’s passed under the bridge since last March, over seven months ago, since Ireland last played.
“We’re just starting, that’s all we’re doing. We’re starting the exact same as we did last year. It’s the same buzz, it’s the same feeling coming into it. We only played one of a block of teams from the Southern Hemisphere who are one-two-three in the world, and when they came over last November they won every game bar one. So it’s a whole new level. It’s like going from primary school to secondary school,” says the schoolteacher.
He has, generously, pushed back a meeting and found a quiet little mini conference room at the back of the Carlton Castletroy Park Hotel. Flicking through a copy of The Irish Times Grand Slam book, autographed for him by Jack Kyle, he says “lovely man, isn’t he?”
Not surprisingly, Kyle said something similar.
Needless to say, too, a year in the job hasn’t changed Kidney a jot. Being the Ireland head coach is a heavy responsibility and, of course, when it goes well especially, a source of pride, not least when helping to ease other people’s anger and angst over the state of the economy, and his occasional references to it suggests he shares that anger.
“There is a huge pride, and a huge onus, and we’ve mentioned that. We’ve talked about that and we know the onus that is on us to perform to the best of our ability, but we also believe that the true sportsperson in the country knows that if we do that people will stay with us.
“That’s more important, probably, than the result, that we go about our job in an honest way, and that we use our resources wisely, that we plan for the future, that if the economy is teaching us anything now: deal with the present, but don’t be that greedy. Otherwise what will happen is we’ll have a good year and then we’ll go through five or six years of people wondering why.”
Historically, the fall-out from Lions tours has been severe, notably on England post-2005, which makes this season’s juggling act of Ireland’s small pool of playing resources all the trickier. The Ireland management and provinces are clearly not singing as harmoniously from the same hymn sheet this season, yet he draws on his own experiences of coaching provincial sides after the previous two Lions tours to maintain that despite the juggling, provincial form has been pretty good.
“The perception is that they could be in a bad place but all the results are showing that they’re not. If we had won every game that would present challenges, if we had lost every game, that would present challenges, the same if we had more or less injuries. Would we be in a better place now if the boys had been playing since the start of August?”
The answer is yes, but longer-term it would be at a consequence, or as he puts it: “But then, rugby wise, we’d be making the same mistake as we made with the economy. We’d be over-spending. And surely if we haven’t the common sense to learn from that then we’d only have ourselves to blame.
“Rugby has gotten more popular but it’s not like we have an unending line of players. Of the four teams that start in the Magners League there’d be 60 players of whom about 48 of them qualify to play for Ireland. So we just need to be managing what we have really.”
There remains a healthy Munster/Leinster rivalry and ribaldry between Kidney and Paul McNaughton, the Ireland team manager, but you particularly wonder how the Ireland coach felt watching Leinster’s 30-0 destruction of Munster.
“I think I said to Gert (Smal) and Les (Kiss) at half-time, ‘if we can produce that first half against Australia we won’t be in a bad place’. That’s what I saw, and that’s my job, to go there and do that.
“Paul and myself have a good slag between us and if we ever hid away from that we’d be false and there’d be no honesty then in that. It was a great sporting occasion and I felt proud of the players trundling into one another. The respect they had for one another at the final whistle, the way they shook hands. The same as the three fixtures last year.
“They look at one another, they have a right go at one another and then they shake hands. It’s just a special time. People talked about Dublin-Meath in the football or Kilkenny-Cork or whoever in the hurling; Munster-Leinster in the rugby. It’s just a special time at the moment. Now Ulster are starting to add their bit to that and Connacht did a bit of damage last year. Interpros are good matches.”
The single biggest topic of conversation on the rugby grapevine, undoubtedly, has been the form of Ronan O’Gara and, by extension the emergence of Jonathan Sexton. O’Gara had an undistinguished World Cup and even last season was not at his best throughout the Six Nations, before having a psychologically wounding Lions tour.
Yet not only is he the man in situ, he also delivered a certain, fairly valuable drop goal in his last outing in green. And if it seemed unthinkable that he might be jettisoned just yet, it’s even less likely after bringing up the topic with Kidney.
“When Ronan was kicking drop goals and winning us Triple Crowns and Grand Slams I would have said he was doing okay. I think he’s doing okay now too. All that I see is that Munster are top of their (Heineken Cup) group and are enjoying fifth place in the Magners League. You can’t do that without your outhalf doing his job.”
No coach knows O’Gara and his reserves of mental strength better than Kidney, and it’s clear Kidney still believes in him.
“He has a resilience all of his own,” says Kidney with a knowing chuckle. “Look, Ronan and myself have been together for 16 years. I haven’t talked about him in 16 years and I have no intention to start talking about him now.”
Even so, last weekend, Sexton and Ian Humphreys were continuing their upward graphs, as was the newly-capped Ian Keatley at Connacht, while even Jeremy Staunton and Barry Everitt were going toe to toe at Welford Road. There are at least the beginnings of some options now, which is also why they asked for the summer Tests.
“So everybody is working up towards building a bit of experience. But, you know, they’ve a fair bit to catch up with Ronan yet. They’re starting to play, but two months doesn’t make up for 10 years.”
Kidney recalls asking a player once if he liked playing outhalf, to which the answer was: “No, they get all the blame or all the glory.”
Kidney reckons it should be neither.
“If you get all the glory it’s because so much has to go right around you. If it’s not going right for you, you have to look at what’s going on around you.”
Kidney and McNaughton have, in all probability, assembled the best coaching team ever to take charge of any Ireland side, period. They are all, also, ambitious men, who for all the homespun one-game-at-a-time, back-to-square-one philosophy, clearly have one eye on the World Cup.
Unlike, say, Scotland and Wales, Ireland have never reached a semi-final, and in two of the last three World Cups haven’t even reached the quarter-finals. At the very least, they don’t want to go there with a team over the hill or with just 15 players and no squad, per se, to utilise.
The composition of the 39-man squad for this series hinted as much, though it could be that some of those left out of the 39-man squad are being spared the miles.
“Well, we’re multi-tasking. So what we did was ask the union for extra matches,” he says, pointing to the A game against the full Tongan side next Friday, and how to mix and match between players of contrasting maturity and experience.
“If you put out 15 sprogs that’s unfair on them. If you put out 15 experienced fellas, who are playing week-in, week-out, you’re better off maybe, like a vintage car, reducing the mileage and getting them there. Yeah, we’ve a plan in place, but the plan is to concentrate on every match as it comes. When we play Australia, it won’t be with an eye to playing them in two years’ time.”
This time a year ago, the coaching ticket were still getting to know each other, but you’d imagine strong bonds and friendships having been built for life in the intervening 12 months.
“Last year, some of us knew one other slightly better than others, but everybody sort of knew everybody else so there was a lot of respect there from day one. If you spend the number of hours (together) we do I suppose you’d have to be getting on. We enjoy one another’s company; that’s probably what’s made the meetings go on so long.”
Such has been the progress made that they are now, on the formbook, the leaders of the European pack, but like all leaders of the pack, if they stand still they’ll be overtaken. Ireland’s game has to evolve further.
As ever under Kidney, Ireland will not try to do things they can’t do. “It’s not like we’re the be-all and end-all. We won a competition last year but we’re the same people we were this time 12 months ago.
“We’re now more of a target in other people’s eyes, we’re now more analysed, more so more of our failings will be spotted, more of our warts will be attacked. So, can we get stronger within that? Look at how we play. Do we change it just for the sake of changing it, no? But we look to change it to bring out our strengths a little bit more.
“We must play like any Irish team, we must just play smart,” he says, chuckling in recognition of the odds which are usually stacked against any national team from this island.
“Because if we go out and say ‘well, this is our game and we’re good enough to beat anybody playing this way’, we’re going to get hammered. In fairness to the soccer team, they’re playing to their strengths. Everybody might like to see the beautiful game but it’s a difficult thing to put together depending on the quality of the team you’re playing against.”
This time last year, as well, Kidney was approaching his first proper match week after six months in the job. The lengthy longueurs between the three blocks of matches – November, Six Nations and summer tours – is still something that he struggles to enjoy.
“I could have done nothing since last March but I’m really glad I did May (the Tests against the USA and Canada) and the Churchill Cup, for all sorts of reasons. It’s one of the sacrifices of the job. I miss the day-to-day stuff.”
He’ll love this month so. What will make for a good November 2009? “You probably won’t like me for this,” he forewarns, “a good month will be where we can look ourselves in the face and say we gave it everything. That seems like a cliché but you try and see what’s the underlying thing in your book.
“I’d like to think that’s what the underlying thing is. And I didn’t hear one person say anything acrimonious about the Tipperary hurling team this year. An absolutely brilliant sporting day.”
Honesty of effort and performance. The Kidney Way. It’s served him and us well so far.
