Kidney makes the right calls for that vital winning start
Coach Declan Kidney has selected a team based on in-form players in the positions where they have been starring for their provinces
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ALLOWING for Keith Earls' unavailability, coach Declan Kidney has picked the best and most balanced 15 available to him. Were the Munster man fit and ready for action, I'm not too sure Kidney, despite his undisguised admiration, would have thrown Earls in for Saturday.
It would have been a bold call, with Paddy Wallace's selection more than justified irrespective of the Earls option.
While the romantic in me would have gone with Earls alongside Brian O'Driscoll, I have no issue whatsoever with Wallace's call-up now. One of three in the side (O'Driscoll and Donncha O'Callaghan being the others) to figure in Kidney's World Cup Youth-winning team back in 1998, it has taken the former Campbell College player significantly longer to blossom at the highest level.
Back then, Wallace wore the No 10 shirt and, in many ways, it has been his inability to nail down a positional preference, whether out-half or centre, that has blighted his representative career to date.
And while the presence of a certain David Humphreys in Ulster hardly helped, Wallace has seldom appeared comfortable or in control when asked to pull the playmaking strings.
Rejuvenated
At inside centre, he is applying much maturity and no little skill in linking David's younger brother Ian and the fast-emerging Darren Cave in a much-rejuvenated Ulster backline. He is, along with Stephen Ferris, very much in form.
Wallace is, and has always been, a natural inside centre where he cuts intelligent lines and distributes cleverly and incisively. This is his opportunity to make the position his own for the championship.
Kidney has opened the midfield door with one centre slot between Earls, Gordon D'Arcy, Luke Fitzgerald and the new incumbent very much up for grabs. Saturday's challenge will certainly tell a tale.
Beyond that, Jerry Flannery gets the nod ahead of Rory Best in a call that could just as easily have gone the other way.
Either way, I suspect a 50-minute/30-minute split. Denis Leamy will, of course, be disappointed not to have made the starting line-up but, like D'Arcy, his involvement in the match-day 22 is a major step in the right direction.
It has left Jamie Heaslip the main beneficiary, and here again, despite blowing hot and cold in an indifferent Leinster side, it is a selection I support to the full.
There is a balanced dynamic to the back row, with Heaslip hinting at a return to the outstanding form of last season, specifically in his last run-out against Edinburgh at the RDS.
With the obvious exception of Tom Court, there is oodles of experience on the bench and in Leamy, D'Arcy and Geordan Murphy, three players with the versatility to enable Kidney shake things up dramatically should that need arise. Whatever your take, it looks a formidable Irish side and, with no place even in the match-day 22 for Alan Quinlan, surely one well enough equipped to provide the new main man with that all-important winning Six Nations start.
- Tony Ward
