The IRFU pulled the plug on the Declan Kidney era yesterday, announcing that he would not be offered a new contract. It draws a line under another managerial tenure that has been a distinctly mixed bag. Kidney’s career as head coach can neatly be split into two bundles, one succesful, one not; the unbeaten claendar year in 2009, and everything since then. We’ll always have the memories of Ireland’s long overdue Grand Slam, but beyond that, it was a long, slow and often painful slide towards the fiasco that was this year’s Six Nations. Everyone knew the end was coming, except Deccie himself it seems, and the only surprise was that he didn’t resign and instead made the IRFU effectively sack him.
Sports coaches on the brink, movie stars in decline, those in power falling from grace: they all have a habit of telling you they wouldn’t change a thing in spite of the grisly endgame. We don’t know, but Kidney will probably never publicly admit to having made grievous errors in his tenure as Ireland head coach, but here are five mistakes that, privately at least, he’ll probably rue.
Paris, 2010. Paddy Wallace’s selection on the bench to cover the outside backs
Following Ireland’s stellar 2009 calendar year, the notoriously hard trip to Paris was the biggest obstacle in their bid to repeat the trick with another Grand Slam. The team was largely unchanged, but the bench had an odd look to it with the rapidly emerging Johnny Sexton now in the 22 as reserve fly-half, but Paddy Wallace retained as cover for the back division.
Ireland started brightly, causing the French worries with Gordon D’arcy looking threatening; indeed he was very unlucky not to score following a clean break, when his chip over the full back bounced oddly and out of harm’s way. But things took a turn for the worse when Rob Kearney went off injured. With Paddy Wallace the only available cover in reserve, a lot of shuffling around was required. Earls moved to full-back, Wallace came on at 12 and D’arcy was shifted to the wing, where he was notably less effective. Ireland’s attack was blunted and the French moved through the gears, eventually running out impressive 33-10 winners.
Symptomatic of wider malaise? Yes. In truth, Kidney never really developed the art of using his bench. As coach of Munster he generally kept changes to a minimum; in the 2008 Heineken Cup final he brought on only two replacements. As test rugby became increasingly a 22-man (and then 23-man) sport, Kidney struggled to adapt. The bizarre (non) use of Sean Cronin as reserve hooker exemplified this.
November 2010. Failure to select Mike Ross and Sean O’Brien
Following a ho-hum Six Nations in 2010, and with the World Cup on the radar, the November test series looked like a chance for Kidney to refresh his team, which was now showing signs of rust. The tour of Australia and New Zealand in June was notable for the number of players selected – but most did well, and the team were far more competitive than expected given the injury carnage – four second-half tries while a man down against BNZ, then pushing Australia to the last bell meant the tour seemed like it would be something that could be built upon.
South Africa were Ireland’s first opponents in November, but Kidney elected to remain more or less true to his Grand Slammers of 2009, albeit with Sexton and Reddan selected at half-back. Over the course of the four matches, Kidney stuck rigidly to his template. It meant that Sean O’Brien – explosive with ball-in-hand for Leinster in the weeks leading up to the series – was limited to one start, in the Samoa game, and couldn’t even get ahead of an out-of-form Denis Leamy to win a place on the bench for the real matches.
There was also an urgent need to promote new tightheads, given that John Hayes was now in steep decline. Kidney pinned his hopes on Tony Buckley – occasionally destructive in the loose, but a poor scrummager and with a tendency towards laziness – and when Buckley got injured looked to Tom Court and John Hayes to back him up. It looked a strange decision not to even consider Leinster’s Mike Ross, now a mainstay of the province’s first team and a technician in the set piece, and so it proved. Ross saw not one minute of action, but as the season unfolded and Buckley’s lack of technique proved hugely expensive for Munster, Ross found himself first-and-only-choice for the following Six Nations, while O’Brien was also belatedly promoted to the team. The two players went from outside the match-day squad to lynchpins, more by accident than design. It showed a lack of foresight, canny management and joined-up thinking.
Symptomatic of a wider malaise? Too often Kidney seemed unwilling to promote talented players ahead of ‘his boys’, even when it looked obvious to outsiders that the incumbent was woefully inferior. The debacle repeated itself with O’Callaghan / Ryan in 2012 and ROG / Jackson / Madigan in 2013.
RWC 2011; selection of ROG vs. Wales
In the 2011 World Cup, Ireland stood on the cusp of greatness. They had memorably seen off Australia and dismantled a poor Italy side with little fuss. The tournament had opened up for them, with Northern hemisphere teams lying in wait in the quarter- and semi finals. There was just one slight problem. Their premier fly-half, Johnny Sexton, had a dose of the wobbles with placed ball. It led Kidney to dial 021-4-RADGE for the Italy game, and the Munster fly-half performed consummately.
The question was whether to stick with ROG for the quarter-final, against an eye-catchingly in-form Wales. The Welsh team’s blitz defence and unwavering determination to bully O’Gara had made things difficult for ROG in the recent past. Many expected Kidney to revert to the team which had beaten Australia, with Reddan and Sexton dictating attack from 9 and 10. But he stuck with O’Gara and Murray. Wales read Ireland perfectly, ankle-chopping their marauding flankers and isolating ROG, cutting him off from his backline with a super-fast blitz defence. The chance of a lifetime was lost, and if Kidney could wind back the clock to have one game again, we suspect it would be this one.
Symptomatic of a wider malaise? Yes, an inability to pick correct houres for courses. In all of Deccie’s tenure, we never got the impression he picked teams with specific opposition traits in mind. His first XV was his first XV no matter what. ROG was the man to keep a mediocre Italy at arm’s reach, but his selection was exactly what the Welsh team would have wanted to see. Kidney had to pick Johnny Sexton and hope his kicking woes were behind him (he slotted a touchline conversion at the end of the Italy match, so they may well have been).
Post RWC: failure to replace Gaffney as attack coach
If Ireland’s world cup was anti-climactic, at least it wasn’t an abject failure, and Ireland had done much right, not least in tactically outmanoeuvring the Aussies and their choke-tackle-led defence. But in the aftermath of the loss against Wales, it was largely agreed upon that Ireland were lacking dynamism when it came to ball-in-hand attack, where Plans A, B and C consisted of getting Ferris and O’Brien to truck the ball up. Their attack coach, Alan Gaffney, whose sum contribution appeared to be the Randwick Loop, was finishing up in any case and it looked like the perfect opportunity to bring in a new voice, with new ideas and given a remit to get Ireland’s attacking game up to speed.
Instead, management went down the bizarre route of placing a committee in charge of attack, with Kiss, Deccie himself and Mark Tainton, the kicking coach, taking over the role. If it looked a bit like a patched up non-solution, then that’s exactly what it was. The result was as you might expect – Ireland continued to look laboured with ball in hand. The 2012 Six Nations was another failure, finishing off with the Twickenham Debacle. Brian O’Driscoll was suitably concerned to air his grievances in public, saying the players didn’t really know who was in charge of Ireland’s attack, in what was a rare shot across the bows from the captain.
Symptomatic of a wider malaise? perhaps Kidney’s greatest failing was his failure to deliver a recognisable attacking gameplan for Ireland. His grand slam was won by strangling the life out of opponents and an aggressive kick and chasing game, but once the breakdown rules (sorry, interpretations) were changed to encourage a more ball-in-hand style of play, he never successfully adapted. Ireland’s style seemed to vary wildly from match to match, at times making them look uncoached. Every so often they would appear to click into shape, only to revert to mush in the following match. Ultimately, Kidney’s Ireland lacked identity, a way of playing the game that they owned.
The Entire 2013 Six Nations
2013’s was the last Six Nations of Deccie’s contract, and in effect he was playing for a new deal. The superb performance in beating Argentina had set Ireland up nicely, but from first to last the campaign was a shambles in a way that nobody could predict. Sure, injuries didn’t help, but Kidney and his team had a horrendous championship. The trouble began with the appointment of a new captain, Jamie Heaslip. It looked a positive step, designed to cash in on the momentum generated in November, but was dreadfully handled, not least when it emerged how upset BOD was at having been demoted.
Despite a morale-boosting and impressive win against Wales, things quickly unravelled, sparked by injury to Johnny Sexton. So abysmal was ROG’s performance as reserve that Kidney elected to throw Paddy Jackson into the starting team for the next game, against Scotland. Trouble is, Jackson hadn’t place-kicked in four weeks and management had made a blunder in not ensuring he got some practice the week before against Zebre. In the event, Jackson missed three kicks and Ireland lost.
It got to the stage where every press release issued by management led to backtracking the following day. When ROG was omitted from the squad (justifiably) for the following game, the next 48 hours were spent assuring the nation that he wasn’t being retired, when clearly he was. Sexton was named against Italy, only to be ruled out for a month shortly after the presser had concluded. The entire camp seemed to be imploding.
The final blow came in Rome, where Italy won 22-15 against an Ireland team that looked rudderless and without any sort of gameplan – had Italy been any less nervous, they could have won by 30. The only player to try and make things happen was Ian Madigan, whom management had studiously ignored for the previous 12 months. It just about said it all.
Symptomatic of: failure to plan for future when ROG was visibly fading. Anyone with eyes in their head could see that ROG had been in decline since the 2011 World Cup, but management persisted in putting off the day they break Jackson or Madigan into the squad. It resulted in Ireland having two fly halves with a single cap between them in the squad for the game against France. Had the re-build been conducted in the 2012 Six Nations, summer tour or November series, Ireland might have developed to the point where they could easily have managed the injuries sustained – postponing it meant blooding debutants left, right and centre.
Whiff of Cordite 