Technical consultant Kidney took over the reins at the tail end of last season as the Exiles were in freefall towards the Championship. With former Ireland Grand Slam-winning comrade Les Kiss as head coach, the pair will be seeking to engineer an instant bounceback to England’s top flight.

Tonight’s run-out is the first in a series of potentially arduous steps in that hoped-for direction and Kidney, in his first rugby job since relinquishing the Ireland head coach post in 2013, he is all for looking forward, even when reminded this is his first pre-season in club rugby since Munster geared up for their victorious 2007-08 campaign.

“God, you’re really dating me there, aren’t you? I suppose you’re right but I haven’t thought too much about it,” Kidney, 58, told the Irish Examiner.

I’m enjoying it, the challenge of trying to put a squad together, because last year we took a bit of a nosedive so the first thing to do is to try and pull out of that, level off, and see where we are.

“So there’s nothing like, I’ll have to read the small print in future, this fixture was made long before I came over to London Irish but it’s a great fixture to have against one of the top squads in Europe and it gives us a good barometer as to where we are.”

Kidney and Kiss asked for and received the backing of the club hierarchy, including Irish owner Michael Crossan, to invest not just for the coming season’s promotion bid but beyond to a sustained life in the Premiership if they succeed this season.

That is going to be a hard task but those are the challenges we’ve set ourselves, to get out of a very tough league and build for the future. There’s a lot at stake, but, sure, that’s the reason you get into it.

Irish retained a good number of their Premiership squad from last season and recruited strongly in the off-season, bringing in experience and potential role models in Northampton fly-half Stephen Myler and Leicester’s Springbok prop Pat Cilliers. It will be a mix of youth and experience on display in Cork tonight.

“No different to Munster, we’ll give a good few lads a run-out, different lads in combinations at different stages, so it will be interesting to see how that goes but we will also be looking at our attitudes. That will be a big point, just to make sure we focus on whatever time a fella has on the pitch he makes the most of that with the team in mind and not his own performance.

You just want fellas to get some game time under their belts as well. It’s been a long pre-season because last season finished so early for us and this will just give us an indicator as to where we are and what we need to work on before the league starts.

“We’re a Championship side, we have to face up to that fact. We’re trying to be better than the Championship sides so to get a chance to play against Munster is a great opportunity.

“I thought [Munster] had a great season last season. I know they didn’t get silverware but the fact they’re knocking on the door year in, year out is a great credit to everybody. That’s not an easy thing to do.”

There will be reunions, of course, as Kidney returns to his home province and faces a Munster management featuring former right-hand man Niall O’Donovan, the team manager, and former-player-turned-forwards-coach Jerry Flannery.

With Ronan O’Gara now a Super Rugby-winning assistant at Crusaders and Paul O’Connell settling in on the Stade Francais staff, was there an element of paternal pride in his former players becoming coaches?

It’s a bit depressing really, isn’t it,” joked Kidney.

“No, I’m delighted. I think it’s brilliant that you have guys who are interested in staying involved in the game, giving a bit back to the game. I know they’re in the professional game and Jason Holland is down in Wellington with the Hurricanes but there’s a lot of other lads who came through who are coaching now. Johne Murphy is coaching Naas, for instance.

“And there’s Brian Walsh. He was on one of the first Munster teams I coached at U14 so the fact he’s doing UCC now shows how things have gone full circle. So I’m starting to get used to that idea, not that there’s much difference in age between myself and Brian. I think I was only a few years older than him when he was U14 so don’t age me too much!”