Profile/Declan Kidney: Johnny Watterson traces the career of the Munster coach and offers an insight into what makes the sometime schoolteacher tick
It's a 75-page programme, with the usual assortment of adverts and articles. Produced for Munster's quarter-final match against Perpignan in Lansdowne Road, it's quite a booklet. Magee are selling suits on one page. Jean Pierre Lux, the ERC chairman, blows kisses to the sport on another. In the middle, Cork Airport hope to fly more people in and out of the province, while Gavin Henson, bless him, kneels beside a Webb Ellis ball telling us it flies farther than an airplane ever could in the wet or in the dry. Toward the back there is a profile of every Munster player in the cup squad, 38 in all.
What is missing from the tome is a photograph of coach Declan Kidney or a quote from him about the team, the opposition or the game itself. Kidney's name appears only once in the 75 pages, as one of a long list of 20 that had him as part of the Munster management team. Director of Coaching: Declan Kidney. That's it.
As people have come to understand, it's the way Kidney likes things to be. Understated, only partially visible, Kidney being in the official match programme or out of it makes little difference to the coach. Out is likely to be his preference.
There are unlikely to be two coaches more diametrically opposed in character than Leinster's Michael Cheika and Kidney. The Munster man's background as career-guidance-teacher-turned-coach and Cheika's as fashion-empire-builder-turned-
coach in itself suggests a divergence of interests and character, the two only meeting when it comes to rugby.
Even on match day, the contrast in application is stark. At Lansdowne Road three weeks ago Kidney was the coach on the pitch, kicking stray balls back to wherever they needed to be; Cheika, immaculately turned out in Italian shoes and fine woollen sweater, was never about to muck in.
Press conferences are equally telling. Cheika wanders in, pours a cup of coffee and talks informally to various journalists, sometimes being more candid than he should be and trusting people to understand it's not for print. Comfortable among strangers, he is a natural front man.
For Kidney, engagement with the media has long been more of a chore, one aspect of a wonderful job that simply has to be endured. When people hope for him to be expansive and talkative, he can be terse and reflective. When faced with a tough question, he invariably applies the straight bat. "Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. It depends on how you want to look at it," is a typically considered response.
The Munster coach doesn't chase a profile, nor has he ever done. Far from being a high-profile leader, he is embedded in the team, as much a part of the fabric, attitude and culture as any of the players. His one-term stay in Leinster, which finished controversially at the end of last season, was by general consent as much a homecoming for Kidney, a way back toward his roots, as a preferred career choice.
While the wise Alan Gaffney added to the Munster gene pool in 2002 and took them to two Heineken European Cup semi-finals and a Celtic League title, Kidney's presence has always been felt in the province in some capacity, be it as Munster coach, assistant Ireland coach, under-19 coach, schools coach or, had it materialised, even the manufactured position offered to him, and declined, in 2004, that of "Performance Manager - Age Grade Rugby".
Doubtless, Kidney has learned in the job. But, few would argue, he has given more than he has taken.
"Declan has been with us three years and he has always been trying to get his point across. I think the learning process has gone on both ways between him and the players. It was a big step up from schools coaching but he has instilled not just self-belief and confidence in the players but also honesty and commitment both on the pitch and in training," said Mick Galwey just before their successful European Cup game against Saracens in 2000.
Those qualities continue to characterise the Munster team. The map of his rugby career shows a wealth of experience but says little of the man himself.
"He makes you feel good about yourself, asks only that you enjoy yourself and demands simply that you try and do your best," said a Leinster and Ireland A player.
A veteran of rugby training and coaching, the 46-year-old began playing with Presentation Brothers College (PBC) before graduating to University College Cork and Dolphin, where his late father, Joe, had been president.
His coaching career began when he was still playing as a teenager. It was then he began to invest his knowledge into schools sides from under-13s to seniors.
Highlights of his early coaching career included winning a Triple Crown with Irish Schools in 1992 and winning the World Cup in 1998 with the Ireland Under-19s in France. He also steered Dolphin into Division One of the All-Ireland League for the first time, in 1997, and guided Munster to back-to-back interprovincial titles in 1998 and 1999.
Since then, Kidney has led Munster to European Cup finals in 2000 and 2002 and held the position of assistant coach with Ireland during the 2003 Rugby World Cup and 2004 Triple Crown-winning campaigns.
While he was comfortable in Cork, his relationship with Leinster was more difficult, and his place in the Irish set-up under Eddie O'Sullivan proved in the end fraught and unworkable.
In February 2004 the IRFU announced the creation of a new role in the development of underage talent. They had Kidney, who was then still uncomfortably placed as O'Sullivan's assistant coach, in mind for the job but had critically failed to ask him first. Philip Browne, chief executive of the IRFU, spoke highly of the post.
"The new position we are offering Declan is a key role in the progression of the IRFU's high-performance strategy for the future. We see an urgent need for a performance manager in age-grade rugby in order to provide leadership, direction and technical expertise in the implementation of a plan which is designed in line with supporting sub-professional pathways and systems that meets the objectives and goals contained within the union's strategic plan," he said.
The question was did anyone understand what they were offering. Kidney slapped it down, naturally, with quiet dignity.
"While obviously disappointed by my current contract not being renewed, I appreciate the offer of this new position from the union," he said. "However, the offer in question is not a coaching position as such. Therefore, while considering it, I will now be looking at all options open to me. In the meantime, I will as usual be concentrating on fulfilling my obligations to the best of my ability in the best interest of the team."
The departure from Leinster, whom he had joined in May 2004, two months after the IRFU's "age grade" offer, presented more unwanted media scrutiny and when it was leaked before the 2004-2005 season had ended that Kidney would be leaving the province, it caused a furore. It was probably the most stressful period of his coaching career, and for a man who valued his privacy, the intense focus on his personality and motives could hardly have been more difficult over those few months.
He was, of course, heading back to Munster as a shoo-in for Alan Gaffney's job. Gaffney had decided to return to his native Australia at the end of the season to take up a position as assistant coach to the Wallabies.
Kidney, with a three-year contract, was where he wanted to be - with family and in the familiar world of red shirts.
One thing occasionally overlooked following Kidney's season in Dublin was that Leinster made it to the quarter-finals of the European Cup before Leicester knocked them out.
The team had also won all of their pool matches, which included victories against Bath and Bourgoin away from home. In 10 seasons it was Leinster's fourth time in a quarter-final.
What Kidney's two European Cup finals have brought to Munster are both heartbreak and tremendous joy. But should his time as head coach be seen as, on the one hand, a sequence of failures for not having won the European Cup or, on the other, as the successful construction of the most consistent and passionate team in Europe?
It would be churlish to take the negative view, but Kidney and Munster have a Holy Grail to pursue, and behind that mild exterior there is considerable ambition.
The team and the painfully private Kidney realise that despite their outrageous success in making the knockout stages of the competition for the last seven years, their European Cup odyssey clearly remains an unfinished pilgrimage.
