INTERVIEW WITH DECLAN KIDNEY:The Ireland coach offers his customary mix of self-effacement and understatement, but through it all Gerry Thornleydiscerns the great good sense, the rare psychological insights and a real love of the game
WHEN BRIAN Kerr was informed he had been chosen as the next Republic of Ireland football manager, he was in a hotel abroad. He went across the corridor to knock on the door of his long-time friend and assistant Noel O'Reilly, now sadly no longer with us. The two chatted for hours, Kerr excitedly pacing up and down his room, as they recounted their early forays into coaching.
You wonder what Declan Kidney did? A bottle of champagne maybe, or his favourite tipple, a piña colada? Hardly. Not with Munster having qualified for the Heineken Cup final, with the lessons of being "sidetracked" in the build-up to previous finals, and also in the week of back-to-back Magners League games. There were also final contract negotiations and the issue of when to inform his Munster colleagues and issue a press release.
"I remember walking the pitch around in Garryowen and there was a few phone calls going on. I went in at half-ten, we went through a few things and I said, 'By the way, I have to make a decision, so I'm going to go for it.'
"I was in a great job. The players, as I told them then, were fortunate that they get to play for both (province and country). The coach does one.
"But in the same way that I'd always asked the players to challenge themselves, then I had to back that up if I was to stand in front of them. It is daunting, it is a huge honour.
"That's the trouble with these interviews," he adds, smiling. "They make you think about it. I was just plodding along, doing the best I could with where we were, and then this crops up."
He's been keeping a low profile for five months. Our meeting was arranged for an office in the Connacht Branch as dark clouds rolled in prior to Connacht's match with London Irish in the Sportsground last Friday. Not having turned the lights on, an hour later we were talking in semi-darkness.
But it was the only window in his heavy schedule, which culminates today in the announcement of a 30-plus squad for the tests against Canada, New Zealand and Argentina.
"It has been extraordinarily busy. It's very hard to quantify what's done behind closed doors, nobody sees it. Then if you come out and say what it is, it sounds like, 'ah sure, he's only trying to justify his existence'."
He reckons the influence of a coaching staff is about 10 per cent, the players accounting for the rest, and that he's already done the main part in assembling his coaching ticket.
Whatever about that (he's not getting off that easily) Kidney has made a good start. Gert Smal, Lee Kiss, Paul McNaughton and Alan Gaffney come with excellent CVs and truckloads of experience, as well as, critically, providing a couple of fresh voices for the players.
"We have a lot of younger players coming through and we've a lot of experienced players there, and experienced players who like to be challenged, and so it was going to take people with experience to try and challenge them in that way."
Kidney is at pains to stress, "It's not like there was a whole lot wrong with what was going on," for he would never be inclined to criticise the previous regime. "The last six years will go down as a golden age in Irish rugby, so I think for all those who were involved they're to be congratulated. They certainly found it in wonderful condition and left it with a record that shows it in a better condition.
"For us the job is to come in where it is right now, and see if we can leave it in a better condition at the end of that."
The era has been, undoubtedly, more golden for Munster than anyone else, what with four finals in seven years and twice being crowned European champions in Kidney's last three years with the province. But as the hairshirts are handed out, it's tempting to wonder if, after 10 defeats in Ireland's last 14 games, the boom is over and the bust has already started.
"Yeah, that's one way of looking at it," he begins - and you know full well that ain't where he's going - "but I think like everything else the first thing you do is try and look to see what you have. Ten years ago when we went professional there was a lot of doom and gloom around; we couldn't do anything right. The soccer team had gone well under Jack Charlton and the rugby team had just gone professional and was starting to take off. Ulster won the European Cup, we just cranked it up a bit and times became very good.
"It seems a natural life cycle that if things go very well people can start taking things for granted. It's important not to get greedy or selfish.
"We can still have great fun over the next few years and if you're having fun then you never know what's achievable.
"But we have to get rid of the word 'should'. The only thing we have to do is give it our best shot. If we do that, then anything is possible. If we don't do that, that's not right."
The first-choice XV who routed England in 2007 at Croke Park had an average age of 29 come the World Cup. Realistically, Kidney will be obliged to oversee some rebuilding but he has missed out on the first year of a World Cup cycle. And his room for manoeuvre has been further curtailed in the November internationals by the impending World Cup draw on December 1st, at which the IRB world rankings will decide the seedings.
With Ireland eighth in the world and clinging precariously to the second tier of seeds, Kidney reminds you that had it not been for a late consolation try by the Pumas in their defeat at home to Scotland last June, the Scots would now be ranked eighth and Ireland ninth. Not that he'd be inclined to take the Marc Lièvremont route anyway.
"It's you who said the word 'experimentation'," he points out, adding: "That was your word, not my word. That's why the work at provincial level is so important. International rugby is about taking the best from the guys who play in the provinces and moulding them in a short space of time - and in rugby that's more difficult than in some other codes - into the best team possible, because what we want is the best team. Ireland are better when we have our best team, so you can't experiment because you're representing you country.
"So when fellas play, it'll be because they'll be good enough to play; it won't be an experiment."
You wonder how he felt when he first brought an extended Ireland squad together in Limerick last August, and assembled them with his new coaching ticket in a room for the first time.
"You'd be as nervous as hell," he admits candidly. "You'd have sweaty palms, and that was me. You wouldn't be human if you weren't nervous. But then you have to tell yourself you can only be like that for so long. You have to front up and if you're asking the players to believe in themselves then you have to believe in yourself too.
"That comes easier to some people than to others; it doesn't come that easy to me I suppose, but I'll give it my best because I know that's all I can do."
The one time in the interview where he looks a little hurt is when you put the oft-held theory to him that he is happiest in his Munster environs. He dislikes people being "bracketed".
"When I started off in Munster I was a (Ireland) schools coach. I'll learn in this job too but there's no point in taking it on if you're not willing to learn. I'll make my few mistakes; the players I'm working with will make mistakes - but that's alright. There's the genuine errors but we'd hope to get more things right than wrong."
Yet, while he strives to play down the cult of the coach, wherever he's gone he's tended to have success. He must have some knack for this coaching lark?
"I enjoy it because it's been a challenge but I've been lucky with the people who've been around me."
Classic Kidney. He doesn't do Jose Mourinho soundbites. For the last 30 years, he says, all his fellow coaches have been huge influences, though the formative influence was his father.
"I used to do my training on a Saturday morning in school. I'd gone to a senior club match with him on a Saturday afternoon, he'd bring me to watch the minors on Sunday morning and we'd go to a junior match on Sunday afternoon. I just learned it that way and I always liked it."
Looking back, he wouldn't recommend a young player combine coaching with playing if he wants to do the latter seriously.
THE STORY goes that in his youth - when he played outhalf for Pres and for Munster schools but missed out on the Ireland schools to a certain Paul Dean - he was responsible for losing one and winning one Munster Schools senior Cup final. The former was down to him taking a quick throw to himself, failing to control it and thereby conceding a match-winning try to Christians.
He laughs, even if the story has assumed legs of its own.
"Yeah, I threw it to myself. It went the five yards, I caught it, I got tackled, I passed it back. It wasn't a poor pass or whatever, but they scored a try and we lost. Yeah, it's like all slagging in Ireland. Holl (Jerry Holland, former Munster manager) always slags me about it too. Among my peers, it doesn't matter what I do - it'll still always be there."
He points out that they were still winning the game subsequently by 12-10 before losing to a late penalty, "but sure, you should never let one or two details get in the way of a good slagging."
In any event, you wonder how someone who did this in his playing days reacts as a coach when one of his players takes a risk.
"I believe it's their game and it's their time, so they should play. If the think is right, they should go for it. Rugby is a game of decisions; that's why it's important that you create an environment where players have to make decisions. They'll still have to make decisions, but if they're used to making decisions Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, they'll make decisions on Saturday. That's not just on the rugby pitch; that's in life in general."
There were teams long before there were coaches, he also points out, but this image of him as mere facilitator doesn't entirely tally with players' tales of Kidney the coach. For example, in his biography, Anthony Foley talks of Kidney as someone you didn't mess with, prescriptive, a stickler for detail.
And then he gives an inkling of the other side. He won't lambaste players for making mistakes.
"It's easy to spot genuine mistakes but I think it's relatively easy to spot a mistake when a fella didn't bother his arse to cover a part of the pitch. If a fella doesn't work hard and a mistake is made, that's a totally different matter."
In his second year at college, he began coaching the Pres under-13s. So, effectively, he has been coaching for 30 years. There followed two years with their under-14s before he moved on to their juniors.
"Training under-13 and under-14s would be more difficult than juniors," he maintains, no doubt striking a chord with many an underage coach when adding: "You wouldn't do a warm-up with under-13s, under-14s, you'd do a calm-down. And then the great thing about training kids is that you can't fool them. They have an innate understanding of fairness, and favouritism. That was a great place to do that for a while."
Winning the under-19 World Cup in France in 1998 was different from winning promotion in his second year with Dolphin the year before, working in the "hive" or tournament rugby. They beat Argentina in the semi-finals and the hosts, France, 19-0 in the final.
"They went for it in fairness to them," says Kidney, playing down his own prematch remit they outflank the French four-up defence from the word go and at almost every opportunity.
"An extraordinary achievement really. It was just the coming together of some exceptional players. We went home the next day and back into life."
A year after promotion with Dolphin, John Bevan withdrew his candidature to coach Munster, and Kidney, along with Shannon's Niall O'Donovan, was asked to lend a hand. It's all in the timing. He recalls Dave Maheedy taking the first warm-up, the players being hysterical and himself wondering what the hell he'd landed himself in.
"They'd been laughing and joking but he'd be catching them out and by the time they'd warmed up they were really switched in. And off we went."
After one season as Munster's part-time head coach, he was invited to submit a formal application to become their full-time director of rugby. More sweaty palms: "All I wanted to do was not make a fool of myself with that."
Alas, he did, with an inadvertent substitution of his intended VHS, but he was still offered the job.
He tapped into the Munster clubs' success in the AIL and Munster's great tradition, and 10 years on there have been four Heineken Cup finals, two European titles, and the phenomenon that is Munster and the Red Army.
He enjoyed too his comparatively brief one-year sojourn with Leinster.
"I enjoyed the year immensely. My reasons for going home were personal," he says in reference to his late mother's ill-health. "I knew I was disappointing some of them by leaving and I didn't like that. The opportunity cost in what I did was huge, but first things first."
You wonder what aspect of it he enjoys the most. "The dressing-room after a match," he answers unhesitatingly. "The collectiveness that was there knowing what it takes to win a match within a whole group of people from a whole diverse range of interests and activities, just coming together and giving it their best, and being able to sit and look around. You don't have to say anything. It's just a feeling. And that's been from day one."
You'd love to think he'll have many more of them.
Declan Kidney's coaching career
Presentation Brothers College, Cork (18 seasons in all): Munster Schools Junior Cup winners - 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986 and 1988.
Munster Schools Senior Cup winners - 1991, 1992 and 1993.
Dolphin (two seasons): Promotion from Division Two 1996-1997.
Ireland Schools: Tour to New Zealand, 1992, won six from eight and lost test 27-25, New Zealand profiting from a late try by Jonah Lomu and a controversial late penalty by Jeff Wilson.
Won Triple Crown in 1993.
Ireland Under-19s: Won the World Cup in 1998, beating the hosts France 19-0 in the final in Toulouse.
Ireland A: Won Triple Crown and championship in 2000.
Munster (1997-98 to 2001-2002 and 2005-06 to 2007-2008) Heineken Cup winners: 2006, 2008. Runners-up in 2000 and 2002. Semi-finalists in 2001. Quarter-finalists in 1999 and 2007. Leinster: (2004-2005) Heineken Cup quarter-finalists.
