Kidney reflects on game of ‘tight margins’

Declan Kidney believes London Irish just came out on the wrong side of a game of ‘tight margins’ against Wasps on Boxing Day.

Irish tasted defeat for the first time in two months, going down 38-30 in Coventry, despite scoring five tries in a topsy-turvy encounter.

“These games are always on tight margins - we’ve won games like that before, we’ve lost games like it too,” said Kidney.

“We need to get better at not losing them.”

He added: “All credit to Wasps, they won a few of the pressure points in the breakdown area.

“They won it in one or two other positions too and put us under pressure, coming away with points.

“We had chances to convert positional play into points too, but it didn’t quite happen for us.”

Kidney was left to ponder on a couple of near-misses, especially at the start of the second half, in a period of the game where the next score was always going to be crucial.

“We were on their line at the start of the second half, and they managed to clear it and get that important first score,” he said.

“You can talk about different turning points over the course of the game - and Wasps certainly won more of those than we did.”

He added:“People will talk about a first loss in seven, but it’s one loss in one as far as I am concerned.

“We have to give credit to Wasps for the pressure they put us under, but we can do better than that.”