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The 'cheery, jolly' 20-year-old Kiwi making rapid strides at Irish

(Photo by Karl Bridgeman/Getty Images)

Declan Kidney has given his approval to the rapid progress Chandler Cunningham-South has made at London Irish since joining the Gallagher Premiership club’s academy just last February. The New Zealander, who played for North Harbour U18s, Canterbury U19s and Lincoln University in Christchurch – as well as training with rugby league’s NZ Warriors – before arriving in England, was quickly introduced to the international age-grade rugby system, playing in three U20s Six Nations matches.

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After a 13-minute Irish debut away to Bath in the final Premiership match of the 2021/22 campaign, Cunninghan-South returned to Alan Dickens’ U20s set-up to play four more games with England in their Summer Series.

Since then, he has returned to an Irish squad that lost back-rowers Sean O’Brien to retirement and Albert Tuisue to a transfer – and thrived.

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A starter last month at Bristol, last Friday’s 19 minutes off the bench against Gloucester was the fifth energetic appearance of the 2022/23 Premiership for Cunningham-South and Kidney has enjoyed seeing what the dreadlocked 120kg No8/flanker/lock has been bringing to the top flight fight with Irish.

Asked by RugbyPass for his verdict on the versatile forward whose career has pressed the accelerator in 2022, Kidney said: “He has played more for England U20s than he has played for us. We integrated him in and at the last game of the season with Bath, we had what I would call a circle of life photo.

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“We had Sean, Albert and Chandler. Sean was retiring, Albert was moving on and Chandler was stepping in. You need to keep that cycle of players within your squad. He enjoys the game and that is what you want younger players to do – enjoy and learn at the same time because some of the good things that he does are clear and obvious for people to see and then there are some areas that he knows he has to work in.

“Thankfully, Chandler is an intelligent young man and is more than aware of how much growth there is left in him to get to where he could go. He is a cheery, jolly fella. He brings a good atmosphere to the changing room. He’s a good lad, good company.”

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Flankly 1 hour ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?

4 Go to comments
N
Nickers 1 hour ago
Scott Robertson responds to criticism over All Blacks' handling errors

Very poor understanding of what's going on and 0 ability to read. When I say playing behind the gain line you take this to mean all off-loads and site times we are playing in front of the gain line???


Every time we play a lot of rugby behind the gain line (for clarity, meaning trying to build an attack and use width without front foot ball 5m+ behind the most recent breakdown) we go backwards and turn the ball over in some way. Every time a player is tackled behind the most recent breakdown you need more and more people to clear out because your forwards have to go back around the corner, whereas opposition players can keep moving forward. Eventually you run out of either players to clear out or players to pass to and the result in a big net loss of territory and often a turnover. You may have witnessed that 20+ times in the game against England. This is a particularly dumb idea inside your own 40m which is where, for some reason, we are most likely to employ it.


The very best ABs teams never built an identity around attacking from poor positions. The DC era team was known for being the team that kicked the most. To engineer field position and apply pressure, and create broken play to counter attack. This current team is not differentiating between when a defence has lost it's structure and there are opportunities, and when they are completely set and there is nothing on. The reason they are going for 30 minute + periods in every game without scoring a single point, even against Japan and a poor Australian team, is because they are playing most of their rugby on the back foot in the wrong half.

43 Go to comments
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