Kidney responded by asking the interviewer to explain exactly what he meant. Now, there is the genuine possibility that the Munster coach was utterly confused by the question, but the more likely scenario is that the former school teacher, who'd have a reasonable grasp on the English language remember, simply used a touch of those mental powers to throw the chap with the tape recorder a little off course. Kidney has always been the type of fella to answer a question by asking another one and pretending not to understand a word when it had been suggested that his brain was his principal asset. It's just the kind of humour that would have left him smiling on the inside. A cerebral laugh, if you will.

Not that Kidney's ever claimed to be anything other than a simple coach. He possesses a painful and annoying tendency to deflect praised aimed at him to anybody who stands in his vicinity. The new reality, however, is a little different. No matter how rapidly he tries to offload the praise to some, no doubt, grateful and unsuspecting accomplice, his coaching record is now starting to speak for itself.

Delve into Munster's Heineken Cup history from any conceivable angle and his record stands up to scrutiny alongside any other coach's in Europe, and in one specific area he's the outright leader.

Away from home, Kidney has established himself as the continent's most prolific coach, a boast that certainly contains more beef than a near unbeaten home record.

Away wins in any sport are as rare and beautiful as, say, an Italian truffle, and without wanting to suggest that the Munster coach is any way like one of those hogs that have an uncanny knack of unearthing the delicacy, Kidney has developed something of a habit of sniffing out away victories with both Munster and Leinster.

In general terms, away wins in the Heineken Cup occur at somewhere around the 30-35 per cent mark, and even that figure comes down to around the 25 per cent mark if you discount victories earned on Italian soil. Kidney's record, meanwhile, sits at just over 58 per cent, marginally ahead of the 57.8 per cent posted by former Leicester coach Dean Richard. Guy Noves, whose stats only include the seasons at Toulouse where he was head coach on his own and not co-coach, is next on the list with 54 per cent, but then there's quite a hefty drop down into the 30s for two experienced Heineken Cup coaches, Patrice Lagisquet of Biarritz and former Llanelli coach Gareth Jenkins. The interesting thing about Kidney's numbers is that he's still the top away coach in Europe despite losing his first four away games with Munster.

Indeed, if we start the Cork man's stats from the first time the province won a match away from home, he holds a 69 per cent success rate.

"I suppose he's around the place long enough to be achieving statistics like that, " jokes Mick Galwey, Kidney's captain for many of those games. "I'd never say we found it easy to win at home but it's something that kind of came naturally to us. Away from home was a different story entirely and we quickly figured out that if we were ever to achieve anything in the competition we'd have to win on the road."

A bit of cereal box philosophy appears to have underpinned much of Kidney's away game policy. As the saying goes, if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got and Kidney went about tweaking Munster's away routine as much as he could in those early days. The first thing to go, when finances eventually permitted, were the scheduled flights. Heading to France in those early days invariably included a stopover in Heathrow and more often than not, a long wait. As soon as charter flights became any way financially viable, and they did as soon as supporters started to fork out to follow the team, they were utilised. Kidney also bucked the trend when it came to the industry norm of travelling the day before an away game.

The coach realised that no frequent traveller ever gets a proper night's sleep on their first night in a strange bed and on the back of that knowledge, Kidney made sure his team were in the city where the game was due to be played two nights before kickoff. It was a philosophy Kidney also applied to Leinster's three away trips during his tenure, all of which they won.

"Those little changes certainly helped, " says Galwey.

"Travelling is always a bit of a chore but it helped to have a full day to get back to normal before the game. It also meant that the team, and most importantly the kickers, would get a chance to get a look at the venue. If you're travelling the night before a game, the first time you see the ground is when you arrive 90 minutes before kick-off." There were other little details. In the Bordeaux hotel the team stayed in before their semi-final against Toulouse back in 2000, the players enjoyed the food and the chef was employed by Munster on their subsequent trips to France. "We started bringing some of our own food with us too, " recalls Galwey. "It started with water. For that semi-final against Toulouse we brought something like 500 litres with us. For some reason we then started bringing beans to keep a few lads happy and by the end of my time there we carting potatoes across Europe with us.

Little things but they made a difference."

As have Kidney's mental powers. There are some players who've played under the coach who've been completely baffled by his one-on-one approach, his searching questions and baffling aphorisms.

One young Munster player, who's now thriving under the coach, used to go into personal meetings with Kidney with question scribbled on his hands and up his arms.

The reason? The coach would muddle him to such an extent with questions and statements that the player would forget the reason he went into talk to him in the first place.

But most players over the year . . . albeit more Munster based than Leinster . . . have responded positively to Kidney's way and some of his mind games have gone down in Munster folklore. Like the time before the away Saracens game back in 1999, when he distracted his players with a remote control car and a fez hat while watching a video of the opposition, to ensure they wouldn't be diverted by the Vicarage Road razzmatazz during the game.

That preparation, and an outstanding performance on the day, yielded Munster's first significant victory in Europe and the province have barely glanced back since.

"Declan has a way of planting a thought in your head, " says Galwey. "It was always something simple. Like if we were going to France for a match against Castres or somebody, he'd say something like 'we're unbeaten on this ground' or 'we've never lost to Castres away before', even though it could be our very first time playing against them. Other people might focus on the fact that, for example, Castres had never been beaten at home before, but Declan would put a twist on things."

After the initial flurry of breakthrough away victories, winning on their travels became something of a Munster habit and this lunchtime in Cardiff, Kidney is in search of his 19th win, his 16th as Munster coach. His methods have changed slightly through the years . . . on some trips they'll now travel just one night before the game . . . and having won the Heineken Cup last May, the pre-match psychology is obviously a little different. But it's likely to be the words that have altered, not the approach. Kidney, after all, is cute enough not to tinker with a routine that clearly works.