FOLLOWING A RECORD 60 – 0 drubbing at the hands of World Champions New Zealand, Declan Kidney refused to be drawn to the topic of his future as Ireland coach.
In this morning’s post-match press conference, TheScore.ie‘s reporter asked whether he and the players could still go on, regroup and challenge for honours.
“I’ve absolutely no doubt that the players can go on and do that (challenge for honours), because just have to get more consistent in what we do.”
Kidney omitted himself from the equation and was asked to clarify and responded in a sharper tone:
“It’s an honour to coach your country. I’ve been asked to coach them and I will continue to coach them.”
The basis of the results, Kidney says, are the opening exchanges; an area Ireland were able to find joy in last week’s second test.
“Last week,” he said, “we showed how you play New Zealand. Let’s not give them 20 points in the first 20 minutes.
“If you look at the three games – the first game and the third game – we’ve gone behind by a considerable amount by making turnovers and once New Zealand get into their rhythm, they’re not World Champions for nothing and they took their scores then – you’re not going to beat them playing their type of game.”
Bandwagon
The former Munster boss also refuted the suggestion that playing three end-of-season games in New Zealand was, in hindsight, a mistake.
“Right now it hurts. We said we’d find out a lot about ourselves after three weeks. I believe we’ll do that after this.
“It’s easy to hop on a bandwagon right now, we found out a lot of things about ourselves that we don’t like. But now we’ve found them, the time to (correct them) is the off-season. We’ll take a good look at them and we’ll adjust those for the off season, no doubt.
“We will gain in the long run, as much as it is hurtful now.”
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