Kidney bumbles as Ireland stumbles

As I’d predicted earlier in the week Scotland won this encounter by 20 – 23 but I must admit that I was a bit surprised at how comfortable Scotland’s victory was and how quickly Kidney’s decision making dissolved when Ireland went behind.

Anyone who had been following the Magners League would know that Scotland had the potential to be better than their previous results in this competition had indicated and Ireland’s form in the Six Nations had been nothing to write home about with a standard victory over a weak Italy and default wins over self destructing England and Wales.

Ireland had been completely outplayed by France earlier in the competition and it was the same problem areas that came back to haunt them in this encounter against the Scots. The scrum and lineout were destroyed by the competent Jocks and Ireland were bullied at every contact area being knocked back in the tackle and overwhelmed in the rucks. In fact if Kaplan had been on the ball for Ireland’s first try and at scrum time Scotland’s winning margin would have been by 10 – 15 points.

It was Ireland, however, that started the game the better. They opted to play a broken running game, correctly in my view, and created several chances before Sexton sent O’Driscoll through to score with a forward pass. This broken play game is something I have said that they need to develop as it is obvious that we don’t have the ammunition any longer to dominate games up front. Hayes is past it, Healy can’t scrum and both Best and Flannery can get twitchy at line out time if the opposition are competing. Going on the Six Nations performances we’ve got the forth best scrum and the third best lineout in Europe and it world terms that slips to eighth best scrum and fifth best lineout so, I’m afraid the days of kicking for position and running something off guaranteed first phase are gone.

We do however still possess some world class backs and what appears to be another crop there or there about bubbling under and as I’ve been saying over the last eight months, or more, Ireland need to change their game plan to maximise their strengths, though we’re now probably going to be six to eight games short of getting it fully implemented for the World Cup.

Why I reckon it’ll take so long to change is all down to the Munster mentality prevalent throughout the Ireland team, particularly in the forwards. It’s a mentality that has brought much success to Munster and Ireland in the past but it’s one that is based on dominating up front and once that goes there is little to back it up as Leinster showed last season and France and Scotland showed at international level.

If Ireland are to be more than competent at next years World Cup they need to develop their broken play. They need to sacrifice some of the grunt up front for a more mobile pack and start playing players who aren’t afraid to give the ball up at first phase in full expectation of wining it back at the breakdown. They need to be confident to counter attack in the knowledge that they are going to be supported.

Ireland have shown in snatches that they can do this, and they can do it very well, however when the pressure is applied they revert to the past comfort of the pack and this mentality is the nut that still has to be cracked.

No one showed this more over the last few weeks than Kidney himself with his safe selections and his lack of experimentation throughout the Six Nations. What was even worse was the shambolic substitution of Jonny Sexton in his haste to get good old ‘safe boot’ O’Gara on against Scotland. OK, the youngster was having an off day with the boot, but he did give Ireland dominance in one area, namely counter attacking, and he looked the most likely source of an Ireland revival. The farcical timing of the substitution was bad enough, and let’s hope it hasn’t wrecked Sextons confidence for months to come, but what was even worse was Kidney’s lack of understanding that even if O’Gara did everything asked of him, which he did, Ireland were still likely to lose.

If anyone should have been changed out at that phase it should have been Hayes, Best, Healy, O’Callaghan, O’Connell, Ferris, Wallace and Heaslip up for consideration, but given the lack of imagination on the bench the only change I would have made would have been Cronin for Best as at least the youngster might have brought some enthusiasm on with him.

Kidney now has plenty of work over the forthcoming months and hopefully he now realises that the Munster era is over, well at the top end of world rugby anyway. Hopefully we’ll start and see what the rest of Ireland can do and you never know if they do it well a World Cup semi-final wouldn’t be out of question.

If they continue to rely on the old tried and trusted methods then I can see us struggling against Italy and the USA.

You can view pictures of the game from rugbypicture.co.uk here.

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