Scotland v Ireland: Declan Kidney is facing a familiar conundrum as he prepares to finalise his team for Saturday's trip to Edinburgh. With the players involved in Celtic League action over the weekend fit and back in camp, Kidney is again left with tight selection calls at centre and hooker.
Both Gordon D’Arcy and Rory Best continue to press their respective cases for inclusion although with three wins on the bounce, the argument for retaining the services of Paddy Wallace and Jerry Flannery is equally persuasive.
Kidney ran the rule over the squad during training at the RDS earlier today, with all players involved, and the Ireland coach will announce his starting XV at lunchtime tomorrow.
Backs coach Alan Gaffney is all too aware of the selection poser the management team face but admits it’s a nice problem for the coaches to have.
‘Darce’ (Gordon D’Arcy) has been brought along slowly after recovering from his arm injury last year, initially by Leinster and obviously by Ireland. I think you can see a marked improvement in what he’s doing from week to week,“ Gaffney said after training.
“He’s getting more confidence in himself which is obviously a very important thing after being out of the game for so long. I thought he had a very, very solid game against the Ospreys.
“It’s a great challenge (for the centre berth). Paddy’s played well in the three games he’s had — and also ‘Darce’ has put his hand up. It’s a great contest there, and I think that’s been one of the benefits that Declan has expressed in that we’ve got a lot on the guys on the bench who can have an impact.”
Gaffney expects Ireland to have more space to manoeuvre against Scotland than in their win over England, when Martin Johnson’s suffocating defence kept them to just one try in the 14-13 victory at Croke Park.
And Gaffney is predicting a “freer” match on Saturday and more try-scoring opportunities for his side.
“Scotland will defend a lot differently to what England have done, what Italy have done and what the Welsh will do,” he predicts. “When I’m saying we’ll be more expansive, we probably will be — but that doesn’t mean necessarily you’ll get the ball to the wing every time.
“There’ll be a fair bit of ball in hand, I would say.”
Former Ireland defence coach Graham Steadman is now working with Scotland, bidding to follow up their 26-6 win over Italy. Ireland came up against one of their former defence coaches, Mike Ford, two weeks ago against England — and Gaffney is not fazed by another reunion.
“We’ve got to look after ourselves,” he said. “Graham Steadman’s a good defensive coach — there’s no doubt about that.
“He knows a lot of the way Ireland have played over the years. If you go out to try and second-guess, it’s exactly what we tried not to do against England — are they going to put (Joe) Worsley at 10 for certain plays, are they going to stand him there?
“You can’t do that. We’ve got to look after ourselves and be able to adjust if they do that. We might touch upon it [Scotland’s defence] from time to time. But we won’t dwell on it. We can’t dwell on it.”
