Kidney: 'Canada our biggest game'
Tue, 28 Oct 2008 10:03
New Ireland coach Declan Kidney says he has no plans to experiment with his teams lineup for the clash with Canada next weekend – saying in fact that it is perhaps the most crucial of all their November tests.
With the upcoming international’s certain to play a role in the 2011 World Cup seeding, the former Munster boss maintains that his new charges can ill-afford to take their North American opponents lightly at Thomond Park.
"The Canada game is huge," said Kidney.
"It's the biggest of the three games in lots of ways because in the IRB system, it isn't a case of if you don't beat them you don't get any points, if you don't beat them you actually lose points.
He explained: "The job teaches you to treat each week on its own. You're doing a disservice to fellahs who have played for Ireland before if you experiment. There will be no experimentation. The fellahs who'll play will be good enough to play for Ireland.
"Provincially, there's so many games in the year you have to rotate a bit because fellahs can't play every game and there's more scope in a league format to do that. The excitement of November is that instead of it being three one-off Tests there's a league element to the whole thing and that's spiced it.
"When was there ever so much discussion about the release of players for a series of matches? When you're sitting there for the draw in December, November decides which [World Cup] hat your number is in and you have to live with that for the next three years.
"We could win all three and Scotland could win all three and they could go above us. If we win two and Scotland win two they could go above us. It's a fairly intricate system. If Argentina didn't score that last-minute try against Scotland to lose by 12 points instead of 19, then we'd be ninth. Argentina did us a huge favour by scoring a try in the 83rd minute in the Second Test in June. That's how tight it is."
Forget New Zealand - here come the Canadians! what is your best starting lineup for Ireland?
