Declan Kidney says London Irish need to learn how to finish games off after his first game in charge ended in a 33-29 defeat at Madejski Stadium.
More than 15,000 fans turned out for the annual St Patrick’s Party and saw their side race into a 17-0 lead, only to collapse to 33-17 behind.
Two late tries set up an exciting finish, but the Exiles were forced to settle for two bonus points, which only closes the gap to 10 points to second-bottom Worcester Warriors with four games to play.
Here is what Kidney said to the media after the game –
On encouragement in the performance…
I saw loads of things to encourage me but we still lost. So that’s the flip side of the coin isn’t it?
There’s plenty of good things there but at the end of the day there was a game there and we came off second so I wouldn’t be inclined to let them settle for that because I think we’re better than that.
On if they can still stay up…
I’m not really looking at it like that. Today was a big game, it was obviously the biggest game in the London Irish calendar and we just treated it as that.
We have another massive game in two weeks time now against Harlequins. Unless we perform well in that match, all those other things I’m sure you’ll have to write about them and think about them but we just need to get ourselves right for that one game because if we try and think of anything else we’ll just bury ourselves.
On missing the chance to go 24-0 and then quickly conceding…
I thought the way the game went really you could break it into the four quarters, which was obvious enough.
The first quarter I think we did reasonably OK. It took a lot of energy from us to do it but we managed to get points and we managed to do what we wanted to do.
In the second quarter, we probably need to learn how to manage our game and that’s not any one person, I think that’s everybody in the way that we went about that second quarter.
The third quarter, there’s also some issue with that that I know we can address. When you asked me was I encouraged, I’m encouraged because I believe that they’re under our control, I wouldn’t go into too much detail on those now but that’s the way the game went.
And then the fourth quarter, when the finishers were on I thought we finished quite well. I know that winning can be a habit and losing can be a habit, we just need to learn how to finish off these games.
On if London Irish are a Premiership standard club…
I would think so. I wouldn’t see any reason why not. I’ve seen the structure in behind the club. I believe that it’s strong enough to be there. I think the stadia for the matches and the training sessions, which is just my experience to date, they’re all top class but we need to finish off these scores in the games and not to accept anything less than that. But in regards to being a Premiership side, absolutely.
On retaining possession as opposed to kicking…
I think Gloucester kicked it wisely and I think that was probably a little bit of difference during the game that they managed their way through it quite well and I would give them a lot of credit for that and I think it’s a mixture of both and knowing when to do each one.
You don’t want to be kicking just for the sake of it and you don’t want to be running just for the sake of it but it’s learning that balance. I think that takes a while and we have some senior members of the team who can help things for us but they need to be managed during the match and they need to manage themselves.
With the younger fellas the exact same as well, they’re full of enthusiasm and we just need to get that managing aspect that I spoke about in the second quarter just learn little things in and around that. Obviously at this stage of the season it’s an ask but isn’t that the fun of the challenge?
On Josh McNally’s comeback…
I’m just getting to know these lads over the last two weeks and I know that Josh has worked hard to get back in. I thought he did very well for the time that he was on the pitch and I think that he can go from strength to strength.
But I thought Seb as well too when he came on, he was obviously disappointed not to start so I thought he brought great energy to the side. I thought we were lucky to have the two of them.
