Declan Kidney confident back-to-back games won’t play into Scots’ hands tomorrow

There are hopes among Scots fans that the fact Ireland have been forced to play their final four tournament matches back-to-back after their game with France was postponed and played last weekend, means tiredness will creep into their performance in the Aviva Stadium.

The fact that the games are coming towards the end of a season in which the World Cup took place may also point to a drop in energy levels, but Kidney dismissed that.

He said: “Once we were given the fixture list that we had we looked at it and said: ‘well, what do we do?’

“We had the experience of the World Cup whereby you’d have your four pool matches and you can rotate things around.

“But it’s not actually the pool stages of a World Cup, it’s four cup finals, and so it’s important to take each one with your best foot forward and that’s what we’ve done.

“We did it two weeks ago against Italy, and last week against France and that’s what we’re doing again this week.

“You have to measure things in. There’s lots of things I’d like to do, but the most important thing is that lads are looking forward to the game, and that they’re allowed a chance to freshen up as much as possible while also feeling confident in what we were trying to achieve.”

Kidney has only run one full training session this week, on Wednesday and, even then, a handful of players took little part, including Jonny Sexton, Keith Earls, Donncha O’Callaghan and Sean O’Brien as they continued to recover from knocks. Kidney lost flanker O’Brien yesterday as a foot infection failed to clear up, and he joined Paul O’Connell and Conor Murray on the sidelines, along with long-term injury victim Brian O’Driscoll.

Munster’s Peter O’Mahony will replace the reigning European player of the year with Shane Jennings drafted on to the bench.

“Sean has a skin infection on his foot which has failed to recover as quickly as expected,” read an Irish Rugby Football Union statement.

But Kidney remains optimistic, and is confident that his new skipper Rory Best will provide the leadership that O’Driscoll and O’Connell brought to the side.

“You never want to lose anyone to injuries and stuff like that, and leadership,” he said, “but that’s the way sport is.

“It’s an opportunity now for other fellas to put their hands up. It was refreshing at training.

“There were a few lads starting to talk up more. They recognise the situation and they’ll bring their tuppence as well too, and I suppose because I’ve been lucky to be around for a bit I remember when Woody [Keith Wood] used to lead the chase there for quite a while and then Brian [O’Driscoll] rode in behind him and then Paul [O’Connell] rode in behind Brian. That’s just the way that it happens.

“Usually at this level people will not be coming from polar opposites in what they want to do but it comes down to little things being put in places.

“Brian might like doing one thing, Paul another and Rory another, so the job then is making sure that he’s not alone, but the players around him are supporting him.

“But you can’t play the game for them. Our contribution to how the lads play on Saturday is fairly small. It’s how they feel themselves that’s the major thing.”