Fitzgerald too far from form to be on the plane
Kidney to deliver bad news to Ireland's under-performers, says Brendan Fanning
Luke Fitzgerald. Photo: Sportsfile
There won't be any need to worry about having your phone on or off this morning. No one will be dreading a text that gives them bad news, or not getting a text that gives them good news. Rather if you bumped into Declan Kidney in the corridor of Carton House yesterday and he suggested stepping out for a chat, then chances are he wasn't about to make your day.
"It will all be done face to face," says manager Paul McNaughton. "There won't be any texts."
It is ironic that just when Ireland put together the busiest programme of warm-up matches for the World Cup, of any of the European teams, they get through the games in reasonable shape but still end up looking at a van load of players who are behind schedule.
So was the Player Management Programme worth it? All the charts and graphs measuring who should do how much and where and when? All the dislocation of nose joints for Joe Schmidt, Tony McGahan, Brian McLaughlin and Eric Elwood? It was if you believe that it's still worth planning for tomorrow, even if a simple turn of events can leave those plans in shreds.
To put this is perspective, it's not as if Declan Kidney is surrounded by strips of paper where a while ago he had a clear and defined path forward, with fit and fresh men ready to take every step, but he has issues. Like the fact that at least eight of those who are in the squad or very close to it are behind schedule. And the PMG was all about schedule, about getting the right players to New Zealand in optimum condition.
I don't think it's anyone's fault that that they are now off the pace. Well, in the case of Gordon D'Arcy you'd wonder about the time between him playing the Magners League final and eventually going under the knife -- which made his optimum pre-season of seven weeks unattainable -- but maybe this too was unavoidable. What is inescapable is that we can't be where we wanted to be when it comes to playing Australia in the second pool game.
That affects how the squad is being put together. Kidney is notoriously circumspect around decision-making but you can understand how hard it is currently to find the right combination, because there isn't one. Unlike 2007 (a 16-14 split between backs and forwards) or 2003 and 1999 (both 17-13) when there wasn't that much pain about any of the combinations, the passing years have changed the pitch.
So you look at the age and injury history of the first choice centre combination of D'Arcy and Brian O'Driscoll, and fear that with only 13 backs you'll find yourself in trouble before too long. Or as recently as Thursday night in Donnybrook, when Connacht took a few lumps out of the Irish scrum, that only four props would never last the course. When you saw what was unfolding there, with the clearly limited combination of John Hayes and Tony Buckley, you thought back to when Kidney was assembling his training squad and why he weighed himself down with scrumhalves, and left himself light on tight-heads.
Since that squad got together in Carton House in June, stories have emerged at various points about who was turning heads on the training ground, and who -- Cian Healy for example -- needed humongously loaded weights to keep himself amused in the gym. And you wonder how Jamie Hagan might have fared in that company had he been there from the start.
So no matter who he settles for, it will be a compromise. Personally I'd cover the midfield and back row, and soldier on with four props -- one of whom hopefully will still be Healy -- and another would be Buckley, even though Hayes seems less liable to be upset.
More than most props perhaps Hayes gets fit primarily through playing. People will remember the positive contribution he made in the Magners final in May against Leinster, which was his third start in a row, having started only one of the previous five games.
So far in this warm-up series he has had well over an hour's rugby, between Scotland and Connacht, but, if selected for the World Cup, probably wouldn't start another game until we play Russia in five weeks. In Hayes's life that is an eternity. In Buckley's world a lifetime passes between each scrum, but he is younger and fitter and at least capable of sometimes doing damage somewhere else. We are in this situation, by the way, because of our failure to produce more home-grown props. The next time someone tells you that questioning the number of non-Ireland qualified props floating about the game here is xenophobia, point them to a selection process such as this.
Acknowledging the risk of going with four props, check out the red cross following our back rowers around. Stephen Ferris looked fine yesterday, though must be living in dread of another bang on his knee and what it might do to him. David Wallace meanwhile is being micro-managed, and is in the catch 22 situation of having his ankle looked after but being short of a gallop to see how far he can run when it matters. And Shane Jennings, who is riding shotgun for Wallace, got his first taste of rugby yesterday afternoon. He nibbled when he needed to take a bite. Denis Leamy is no seven but he's fit and worth the trip. Five players, with a sixth in Donnacha Ryan, covering second and back rows, might see us through.
Behind the scrum it's a safe bet that the two men who slept least were Isaac Boss and Luke Fitzgerald. It doesn't take much to turn Kidney off Boss, and the remarkable progress of Conor Murray might do it. He should look at it from another angle: the reason he is picking Tomas O'Leary is for what he has done, not what he is about to do, and certainly not for what he did yesterday. The good bits O'Leary did were in 2009 when the Lions picked him for South Africa. The fundamentals of his game are well removed from World Cup standard, and, unlike tight head, there are options.
So too with Fitzgerald. He is a different player from the Lion of 2009. This is the tail end of 2011 and Fergus McFadden has form, as indeed he had when Joe Schmidt passed him over for Fitzgerald for Leinster this season. You suspect Kidney was lining up an awkward conversation with Fitzgerald today, but it might be redundant if Felix Jones is ruled out. With Fitzgerald so far from form, Geordan Murphy would be a better bet to replace Jones. Either way, there are hard words for someone coming down the corridor.
Brendan Fanning's Squad
Backs: R Kearney, F Jones*; T Bowe, K Earls, A Trimble, F McFadden; B O'Driscoll, G D'Arcy, P Wallace; J Sexton, R O'Gara; E Reddan, I Boss, C Murray.
Forwards: C Healy, M Ross, T Court, T Buckley; J Flannery, R Best, S Cronin; P O'Connell, D O'Callaghan, L Cullen, D Ryan; S Ferris, S O'Brien, J Heaslip, D Wallace, D Leamy.
*G Murphy if Jones not passed fit
