Was there any real surprise that the broadside fired at Irish rugby came from, lo and behold, an Australian?

Departing Leinster backs coach David Knox’s wide-ranging salvo encompassed criticisms of Ireland’s failure to evolve as a side, an over-reliance on Brian O’Driscoll and an ultra conservatism in the approach of Irish coaching, in particular the man charged with delivering a second Heineken Cup to Munster this weekend before he takes up the reigns of the national team.

The appointment of Declan Kidney as Ireland’s new coach, said Knox was “a big mistake.”

“Munster are going to win the Heineken Cup again, I’m sure. But please don’t come and say afterwards you play good rugby,” he added

“Munster’s record is fantastic but you can’t tell me they play anything more than 10-man rugby. Munster get 30 points on the board by grinding away and then when the other team is shot, they try and throw the ball around a bit.”

His point being that Ireland’s failings as a national side are a direct result of Munster’s players’ inability to adapt to a more expansive game when they wear the green jersey.

Or is it?

Is his problem really that the side he has coached hasn’t been good enough to match their rivals’ feats in Europe. Is it more to do with the fact that Knox, an Australian was aiming much of his ire at coach and a team who have built their success on the kind of forward-dominated excellence the ELVs have been designed to negate?

The driving force behind those ELVs? Australia, a team who wouldn’t know a well executed rolling maul or a dominant scrum if they bit them on the backside.

The Australians call the English whinging poms, yet this season we have seen their motor-mouth chief executive John O’Neill attempt the most inelegant critique of England’s style of play at the World Cup - shortly before seeing his side’s pack ground into the dirt.

Then came Knox’s outburst. Quite what he hoped to achieve by spilling his guts having left Leinster, when he can no longer make a difference to the game he views as so intrinsically flawed, is beyond me.

What he has undoubtedly accomplished is to have saved Declan Kidney the bother of delivering a team talk to his players ahead of Saturday’s Heineken Cup final.

In his last match in charge before he takes over the Irish job, Kidney need only amble up to the dressing room wall and pin a copy of Knox’s rantings to it.

The reason Saturday’s clash between Munster and Toulouse is being billed as the ‘Dream Final’ is because it brings together not only two of the  biggest and most successful names in European rugby, but it is a clash of two styles of rugby from opposite ends of the spectrum.

I don’t expect either side to compromise their core values on Saturday, because neither can execute the other’s most effective game plan as well as they can their own. If Knox had his way, we would be watching every side attempt to throw the ball around in a 15-man utopia in the name of entertainment.

That utopia does not exist and those of us anti many of the changes that the IRB is trying to foist on the game hope that it never will.

The Millennium stadium will be full to bursting this weekend with Munstermen praying for a win, be it 3-0 or 33-30.

Either way, they will go home happy, which is more than can be said for David Knox.