Declan Kidney - Should He Go?

TonyMahony

Hello all.
I have registered here because I feel like I cannot stay silent anymore. After watching the Wales-France game I can't help but feel that Ireland will never, ever get such an opportunity to reach the final ever again. The loss against Wales would be easy to take if it wasn't for the massive mistakes that our management made before a ball was even kicked.
Someone showed me a statistic that in the last 2 years the only times we have beaten a top 8 side have been with Sexton at outhalf. It was a crazy decision not to start him. Our best games were with Reddan and Sexton as half pack pairing, why were they not starting the quarter final? It was unbelievable. You had Connor Murray, a guy who had shown very little in his cameo against France and his game against Italy, going straight to first choice and the selection was god damn costly. For me, Kidney saw a young Tomas O'Leary albeit in better form and Kidney picked him because he was 'his type of player' rather than being a better player. Murray and O'Gara were instrumental in losing us that game, Murray's slowness to the breakdown scuppered every single attacking chance and O'Gara offered nothing, no variation, never looked threatening and kicked dreadfully out of hand. I thought that O'Gara going to number 1 after a good showing against Russia was insane especially after Ireland had beaten Australia with Sexton at outhalf. Kidney has shown time and time again that he will drop Sexton at any opportunity, I mean lets be honest, his kicking was off but it wasnt costly. A blind man living in a cave could have told you that with the size of that Welsh backline, O'Gara was going to be an awful choice. I've rewatched the game a few times and our defensive line is incredibly stretched as players have to narrow the gap between themselves and O'Gara because the guy can't tackle. O'Gara just strutting away from his defensive duties moments before the Phillips try said it all.
I must ask, how annoyed must Les Kiss be that the incredible defensive system that he had conjured up was put to the side to start a 10 who offered nothing in attack or defense. Having talked about the mistakes made at 9 and 10 I will now move to the choice of Keith Earls. Andrew Trimble was our stand out back all through the Autumn internationals. He was massively strong in defense and brilliant in attack. Earls meanwhile knocked on, missed tackles and generally looked clueless. He should never have been there and the opening few minutes when Earls' first touch of the ball was to give away a pathetic knock on after taking it into contact resulted in Ireland going from the Welsh 22 to the Irish 22 and Wales subsequently getting a try. Once again, like O'Gara, anyone could have told you that, poor form aside, it was insane to start Keith Earls against that massive Welsh backline. I mean jesus f'ing christ, even in the Autumn internationals the evidence was there that Keith Earls is very poor in the tackle. It was an injustice that Andrew Trimble didnt start most of the World Cup games and let there be no doubt that it was Kidney favouritism.
The 3 big calls that Kidney took, Murray over Reddan, O'Gara over Sexton and Earls over Trimble backfired spectacularly. For that alone, his contract should be reviewed. Why, why why, against the threat of Warburton would you give our backrow a heavier workload by starting O'Gara? It doesn't bear thinking about. Another why, and one I still struggle to get my head around was Donnacha Ryan on the bench when Kidney was facing Warburton. I mean it doesn't take a genius to see that if we were getting murdered on the breakdown that it would be a damn good idea to have an actual specialist 7 on the bench to improve things. Jennings was nowhere to be seen, instead we had Dennis Leamy and Donnacha Ryan which was crazy, absolutely crazy.
I am so upset, depressed and angry at Kidney's performance.I hated that he was appointed head coach and even 4 years ago I knew this was how it would all turn out. He is, as bad, if not worse, than Eddie O'Sullivan. Hes stubborn and he has this unwillingness to adapt which is going to murder you as a coach in the professional game. To be perfectly honest, once the ELVs were changed the IRFU should have pulled their head out of their arses and seen that after the season of 2010, 2011 was going to the same.
I would argue that Ross was flogged to death and ponder at why Hagan was left at home. I look at the likes of North being brought by Wales and wonder why Craig Gilroy or O'Halloran wasn't at least given a chance in the warm ups, they could have shone but we'll never know. You may think that given guys like Hagan, Gilroy, Dominic Ryan a go in the warm ups is insane but I think giving Murray a go in the world cup group stages is insane and then persisting with him even though he was poor. I won't get into Kidney's stubborness with the repeated selections of the likes of O'Leary, Buckley, Hayes but its infuriating.
Irish rugby is in a bad place right now, look at the youth coming through across the water. We need a guy who can completely revitalise the team, bring new ideas, play youngsters and get the backline moving and playing confidently. Kidney is not the man. Any coach who has 6 starting Lions in his team and the ERC player of the year and has the team playing like that deserves to have his contract shredded. I will never forget his inept management. My question to you is, should Kidney go? Oh, the 2 year contract extension before the World Cup, chillingly Eddie O'Sullivan like, IRFU when will you learn?

thebaz

yes Kidney should go , but he wont - we are stuck with him for another couple of years i reckon

bleg

He's making mistakes but there's nobody else available that I'd trust more than Deccie. Our best coach ever.

wixfjord

bleg wrote: »

He's making mistakes but there's nobody else available that I'd trust more than Deccie. Our best coach ever.

:rolleyes:
I think that's by default more than anything.
I'm awaiting the "most successfull ever" ****e to be thrown up too.

seanin4711

No

we are not going to win another trophy under him!

shuffol

Is Kidney the best man to take Ireland forward? Probably not

Should he resign? I wouldnt have thought so, I doubt he feels he's done much wrong

Should he be sacked? Again I dont think so, World Cup was average, but not a disaster

Should he have been given a new contract before WC? Absobloodeylutely not

bleg

He should go for President in 7 years as well.

danthefan

No

seanin4711 wrote: »

we are not going to win another trophy under him!

This is my view also.

LeeroyJones

I'm keen for him to stay. Chopping and changing for the sake of it is pointless unless there is a positive alternative.
The one man I would have serious concerns about in the Irish set-up is Alan Gaffney and he's out anyway. If Joe Schmidt could take up those reigns I would delighted but I don't see that happening.

garhjw

i think he should go. im my opinion, he has taken ireland as far as he can go. for them to develop further, i think a new coach with new ideas is required. perhaps someone like joe schmidt from leinster. or could anyone suggest another irish coach to take over?

padser

I've detailed in other posts the bias I feel he shoes towards either munster players or players he has previously been successful with (depending on your viewpoint) - I wouldnt go over it again.

The bottom line for me is that we have had two excellent performances (england and Australia) since the grand slam season. Other than that (and we have player circa 25 other games) we have been somewhere between average and p1ss poor.

That's not acceptable in my view.

The single good argument for keeping him is that (and Alex Ferguson at united is a great example of this) is that there is lots of evidence to suggest the best manager are ones that are given time to make mistakes and learn from them. NZ took that approach after the last wc with Henry as well (still to be seem how it pans out!)

Overall I would get rid of Kidney - mostly because he refuses to accept responsibility for the big decisions he takes when they go wrong. He decided to play a scrum half with about 15 competitive starts at magners league level and no international experience, he decided to ditch the outhalf who turned around the HC final a few months ago, he decided to fill our bench with forwards who can't make the munster team, he ignored the form winger in the country, he got us to a world cup with key players like SoB and Ross severely short of international experience because he ignored them in the nov internationals.

These (or at least most of them) are decisions many wouldn't agree with - Kideny made them - it didn't work out - he should take responsibility. I certainly havnt heard him do that and I think we (the fans) deserve that much.

Podge_irl

He won't, so it's irrelevant.

I hope he doesn't get a new contract though.

cgpg5

Conor O'Shea is the man!!!

arodabomb

No

@TonyMahony

Massively agree with the points on all three players. Reddan has been consistently great for Ireland, Murray has only just shown up, and while he looks great, he hasn't done enough to displace Reddan. O Gara/Sexton is a great position to be in for choice, but we have to use it. There are games O Gara has to start and there are games Sexton is just made for. This was a game for Sextons attack/defence game.

And Earls, I can't agree more. Trimble was made for this game. I'm really getting fed up of Earls, he has such promise in terms of his footwork, but the amount of times I see him make a break and not even look up to see where the support is. He plays like he is the star man in a schoolboy team sometimes. I was gutted that he got the call into the squad over Fitzy in the first place (I know Luke wasn't on form, but I don't really think Earls wass either).

We now have a backrow/pack that can really compete at the breakdown and a backline that can play good rugby, I just wish we'd mix it up more. Wales identified where they were going to atack us, basically talked about it in the build up and then did it.

But at the end of the day, if we let Kidney go, who are we going to replace him with? If only we hadn't let Gatland go all those years ago ...

RobAMerc

I really hate that we start looking for heads immediately after the poor showing at the WC but I actually agree Kidney should go and we should also see quite a lot of the senior players dropped for the upcoming 6 nations at least.

The guy's we are putting out are unfortunately far too long in the tooth and I think given how low peoples expectations are at the moment - sending out a young inexperienced team in the 6 nations and getting hockied out of it, in my opinion would be a far better result than sending out this tired old bunch of lads and getting expectations half raised that we have a good side again.

The avg age of the welsh is 25, the Aussies are a bunch of kids ( some say are building for the 2015 WC ) - we have a guy 23 getting his first cap !

justsomebloke

locked there is already a DC thread