RUGBY:IF NOTHING else it's assuredly shaken things up and put an extra spring in the step. The proof will be in the pudding come Saturday teatime in Murrayfield, but by making four changes to a winning team sitting atop the table the Ireland brains trust have sent a message to everyone in the squad that, moving on to the final two legs of the Six Nations in Edinburgh and Cardiff, removes any hint of a defensive mindset.
Nor can the alterations be said to grievously weaken the starting line-up. It’s tough on Jerry Flannery, Jamie Heaslip, Tomás O’Leary and Paddy Wallace, but Rory Best, Denis Leamy, Peter Stringer and Gordon D’Arcy are hardly novices and the net result is the starting line-up has 752 caps – the most since the pool game against Georgia in the World Cup in September 2007.
By contrast, Scottish coach Frank Hadden has made just two definite changes from the team which beat Italy, recalling Scotland’s most-capped player and record points scorer, Chris Paterson (who has landed eight kicks from eight in three replacement appearances to date), while Alasdair Dickinson replaces fellow prop Allan Jacobsen, who underwent shoulder surgery last week and could be out for four months.
Hadden said he was pleased to leave Ireland guessing after naming four contenders for the two secondrow berths in Jason White, Alastair Kellock, Jim Hamilton and Nathan Hines. He indicated that Hines, who hasn’t played since January, has made better progress than anticipated in recovering from knee surgery. However, time was needed to assess whether he and Hamilton, who damaged shoulder ligaments in France last month, should displace White or Kellock.
“We are putting Nathan and Jim through a fairly strenuous couple of days with four training sessions, each of them progressively tougher as it goes along,” Hadden explained. “We won’t know until the end of that whether they will be available for selection, so we have decided not to think too much about that.”
He also named just five replacements, with one of the vacant bench places likely to be taken by one of the locks who misses out in what could be a 5-2 split.
The game will also see John Hayes become the most capped Ireland player in winning his 93rd cap, overhauling Malcolm O’Kelly’s record of 92.
Explaining the Ireland management’s rationale, Kidney said: “We have been trying to build a squad. Over the last few weeks it has been away from it, this is the first time we’ve done it in public. I feel it is important they get a chance, they will bring their own chemistry to it. The four guys are playing well, unfortunately four have to lose out. That’s the downside, it just helps us to build a squad.”
Kidney adamantly denied that the back-to-back nature of the two end-of-campaign games against Scotland and Wales influenced his thinking. “I don’t know about the second game, I only know about the first. The players coming in have a wealth of experience. Going to Murrayfield you are going to need every bit of that, although we lose a bit with guys going out. It’s about the chemistry. There are 11 players who are lucky enough to be playing again but a couple of those could have lost out. All I know about is Saturday.”
That said, Kidney also argued that fatigue was not an issue, for if it was it might run the risk of taking their eye off the ball against the Scots, while any notion that the Scots might interpret this selection as somehow insulting to them was given short shrift.
“I wouldn’t really bother answering it. Look at the experience of the players we’re bringing in. It’s not disrespectful for me when you’re picking somebody with 90 caps at scrumhalf. Maybe they would want to take it up personally with Denis Leamy and Rory Best during the game. We need them on Saturday.”
The Scots have completed the most offloads and passes of any team in the championship. “I saw that stat,” said Kidney. “We’re the side who have tackled the least so either they are going to pass less or we’re going to have to tackle more and it’s probably the latter. I have been up against sides Frank has been coaching over the years and they test you all around the park. They try to soften you up and if there is any weakness in your defensive chain, they will exploit that. Nobody wants to be the weak link.”
