Kidney's 'current form' philosophy undermined by omission of Boss
There is only one individual in this green, misty and recessioned isle of ours who has never been criticised. Never.
I refer to our national rugby coach, Declan Kidney.
It's quite an achievement, isn't it? Governments, journalists, farmers, trade unions -- an endless list and not necessarily in that particular order raise the ire of all types of critics.
And critics, of course, come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Thomas Beecham, the noted and irascible orchestral conductor, described critics as "drooling, drivelling, doleful, depressing, dropsical drips". Thomas had a way with the letter D, hadn't he?
But few in the passing centuries have escaped the dropsical down-put -- Shakespeare, Mozart, James Joyce, Brian Cowen -- they have all shipped their fair quota of disrespect. But there is that unique exception; Declan Kidney.
However, all good things must come to an end and I gently place myself at the top of the queue to become the first to take issue with Kidney on the composition of his 39-man squad he has nominated for the autumn internationals, the confrontations with Australia, Fiji and South Africa, this November in Dublin.
So, a big deal then, a fundamental change. Kidney is far from being talkative but he does make the point, consistently, that his priority is picking players who are revealing form.
So my number one puzzle is why did he ignore the Ulster scrum-half Isaac Boss, who has been playing out of his skin?
Instead he has chosen Tomas O'Leary, Eoin Reddan and Peter Stringer. Now this particular drivelling, dropsical drip watched Boss produce an outstanding display in the Ulster-Leinster match so, while I have no arguments against the logical selection of O'Leary and Stringer, the Ulsterman's omission is strange.
Altogether, only six Ulster players have been chosen, in contrast to 14 Leinster players. That certainly doesn't gel with Kidney's 'current form' philosophy, does it? Then, there is the omission of the London Irish lock and captain Bob Casey. Remember the recent Leinster-London Irish match in which Casey and Nick Kennedy, the second-row pair, totally outplayed Leinster? Yet Leo Cullen and Devin Toner are chosen for the November shindigs.
And I wonder at the wisdom of ignoring Girvan Dempsey and selecting Connacht's Gavin Duffy, whose reliability is not on a par with the ever-dependable Dempsey.
Anything else? The dismissal from the international scene of Mick O'Driscoll, Alan Quinlan, Malcolm O'Kelly and Bernard Jackman will have raised a few eyebrows in some quarters.
Kidney prefers some twentysomething-year-olds instead, though wing Shane Horgan is over 30 but survives.
Jackman, a power in the loose, has a basic fault in his throwing into the line-outs but O'Driscoll, O'Kelly and especially Quinlan will be missed for their physicality against the Wallabies and Springboks. Kidney may well regret their absence.
And what about Ian Humphreys? Surely he would benefit if he were associated with the squad. A third out-half to accompany Ronan O'Gara and Johnny Sexton wouldn't actually overburden the outfit. But perhaps Kidney has got it all right.
As Harold Macmillan once declared from Downing Street: "I have never found, in a long experience, that criticism is ever inhibited by ignorance."
- Sean Diffley
Irish Independent
