MUNSTER LEGEND DAVID Wallace has backed up Alan Quinlan’s call for Declan Kidney to help an overhaul of Munster’s structures, but believes the players must be first to steady the ship.
The southern province’s facile 27 – 7 defeat to 14-man Stade Francais on Saturday left Quinlan seeking a sea-change at the province, with every connected aspect scrutinised on top of the coaches and playing staff.
Wallace would like to see an effort to develop players moreso than athletes with a return to prominence of the Ulster Bank League central to his plan to maximise the quality personnel available to the professional setup.
As things stand, the 197-cap back row believes that there are sufficient quality players under Anthony Foley’s watch to be competitive and successful in Europe, but that their skills are not being channeled to anything close to maximum effect.
“I think we have the talent, it’s all about harnessing it in one direction,” Wallace said at the launch of his Swim For A Mile challenge before pointing at the collective defence as an area that seems to drag the rest of the gameplan down.
“I don’t know whose fault it is: is it the group, or individuals? But for me defence is where the biggest changes need to come. As a team, all season we’ve been leaking tries. Dominating possession for large parts of the game and teams get the ball and score too easily.”
Along with lamenting the move to chop tackles over the higher-aimed choke tackle to slow down the opposition, Wallace floated the idea of getting Andy Farrell to divert some of his time away from Team Ireland to Munster. Ireland’s national team has had double-jobbing coaches as part of the backroom staff before – including Anthony Foley – and Wallace is hopeful that a strong voice like Farrell could stem some of the tide flowing against his native province.
A fortnight of sessions from a guest coach, does not come close to curing the deep-rooted ills of a once mighty European giant.
“There are people above (the coaching staff) as well. The whole structure does need to be looked at. Not just at a professional level but the whole structure of the game in Ireland.”
The first stop for Wallace would be to scrap the British and Irish Cup, the home of provincial ‘A’ teams and clubs from across the channel who have greater priorities to concern themselves with.
“The guys who aren’t seeing much time for the province, what kind of game time are they getting? For me, the B&I Cup isn’t a competition that breeds the players that you need. Maybe having more guys of a professional standing playing in the AIL… when I was coming through you were playing against the likes of Frankie (Sheahan) or ROG, these kinds of guys.
“There weren’t as many provincial games, but if you get guys out more often with their clubs, you breed players on the pitch whereas it seems they are breeding them a bit more in the gym until they get to the top level. For guys like 10s and in technical positions, they need to be playing rugby the whole time.”
Restoring the AIL to its former glory would have the added bonus of allowing players who need a little longer to make the elite level room to flourish – men like John Hayes or James Coughlan who got to their mid-20s before finding real form.
I didn’t really play Irish Schools. I probably made a big jump from 18 to 19. That is a little bit late nowadays. But guys develop at different stages and the AIL is now seen as kind of an under league and if you have guys dropping out of the game at an early age then you might be losing a lot of talent.”
He adds: “I think we can do more at club level then just cherry-picking guys at a young age and the rest are kinda left fallow in a system that is not producing because the resources are not put into it and then the players are not being put into it.”
Whether Wallace is thinking along the same lines as his former team-mate Foley these days isn’t clear, but he’s certainly ready to back up the blindside of that famous back row trio. Quinlan yesterday broached the possibility of handing the new broom needed at Munster to a safe old pair of hands, Declan Kidney. Whether as a director of rugby figure or some deeper administrative role, the former Munster and Ireland coach’s two long-term flankers feel his skill-set is wasted at UCC.
“I’ve been saying it for a while that he’s an invaluable guy to have in any squad – he comes from a teaching background, but is also a guidance counsellor, he understands how people think. He tries to create a community and makes sure that everything is looked after.
“He looks at it from maybe a slightly different point of view from your typical rugby coach. It’s not just all about what’s on the pitch, it’s kinda three quarters of what’s off the pitch and that’s the way he thinks.
“I think having a voice from the outside might be good. And certainly from a youth structure, an amateur point of the game, from all the other medical, commercial, corporate sides of the game, Declan Kidney would look at all of those as well and make changes as well.
“He’d see it as a whole and not just what happens on the pitch.”
