THE IRELAND COACHING TICKET:If the disastrous mistakes of recent months are not to be repeated the IRFU's kingmakers must change their ways, writes Gerry Thornley
LAST WEDNESDAY morning, at around 8am or 8.30, Eddie's O'Sullivan and his agent, John Baker, met with Philip Browne and other IRFU representatives, most likely honorary treasurer Tom Grace and PR consultant John Redmond, and began discussing the terms of the head coach's severance package. It was O'Sullivan's camp that initiated these talks, and the clarity of his contract having made it possible, a relatively swift resolution to his 78-match reign was completed by the afternoon. Just like that.
The coach had come to the realisation his time was up after unofficial briefings with key IRFU personnel, some sources suggesting it had been made clear to him on the night of Ireland's 16-12 defeat at home to Wales last Saturday week that the controversial new four-year deal from next month would not come into effect.
A further indication events were moving swiftly came during Tuesday's full committee meeting of the IRFU, when chief executive Philip Browne and two of the three-man Appointments Committee - Neilly Jackson and Noel Murphy - absented themselves for a lengthy period.
That there was such a swift and relatively dignified resolution to his tenure after last Saturday's 33-10 defeat to England would not have been possible without a willingness on both sides, a satisfactory financial package, and the wording of a statement that stressed O'Sullivan had "resigned".
O'Sullivan's "resignation" was mutually beneficial, for as one IRFU figure puts it, "it meant Eddie could walk away without the stigma of being 'fired' and had they 'fired' him, the union would have had to admit they were wrong to give him a four-year deal last August."
Of course the wording does not alter the plain fact that the IRFU's Appointments' Committee of Murphy, Jackson and Pa Whelan - supported by chief executive Browne, director of rugby Eddie Wigglesworth and chairman of the management board John Hussey - were wrong to offer him that extension.
O'Sullivan had been under contract until next month anyway and aside from perhaps contributing to Ireland's malaise at the World Cup and Six Nations, the four-year deal has meant a more costly pay-off than would otherwise have been needed.
Although some have placed the figure at €1 million, and a couple of sources have suggested a sliding scale of severance clauses puts the pay-off at 75 per cent of O'Sullivan's projected €1.5-million wage for the next four years, this seems highly unlikely.
Even though the Union are flush from a €6-million profit arising out of Croke Park last year, and with the proceeds of three full houses at Croke Park this year, such a deal would be foolhardly in the extreme as well as a huge source of embarrassment for the IRFU were it ever to come to light.
The greater likelihood remains that O'Sullivan was supplemented one year's contract (€375,000) or, at most, a two-year pay-off of €750,000.
Even so, when put in the context of the union playing the poor mouth to Connacht and the Clubs of Ireland, anything in the region of €500,000 would be nearly a quarter of Connacht's annual budget.
The view from most pundits outside Ireland is that the four-year deal made the IRFU and Irish rugby something of a laughing stock. The former England hooker Brian Moore, for one, suggested in the Daily Telegraph last Monday that, as a lesson to them, the people responsible for that decision should pay the compensation out of their own pockets.
The IRFU being the IRFU, however, the front man carries the can and walks away with an undisclosed pay-off while those responsible not only say nothing or accept no responsibility but carry on regardless and choose the next coach. By rights, of course, they should resign, as would happen in any other professional business.
The union will no doubt cite the recommendations of the Genesis Review into the World Cup fiasco - a backs coach, a manager of international rugby experience and a psychiatrist to be brought in - as proof of its value. In truth, they didn't need a Genesis Review to tell them that, but the cost of that whitewash and the premature four-year deal will never be revealed in black and white in the annual accounts.
It's conceivable that one, two or all of the Three Wise Men will have begun sending out feelers to some on the initial bookies' shortlist (more a long list, really), for one source suggests feelers were put to the Australian Pat Howard last week. But Howard has ruled himself out. Maybe another day, but not at this time.
There had been speculation among the players last week in the build-up to the Twickenham game as to whether O'Sullivan's cards had been marked after the 16-12 defeat to Wales. Certainly his downbeat and self-justifying comments the morning after the Welsh game - that the IRFU's policy, and his own, was to win every match - carried a resigned note. Nobody in the union, he said, had ever told him to develop players or risk experimenting.
If that is true, those in the IRFU who sought to influence his policy had no business doing so. It brought to mind the disclosure in Brendan Fanning's book From There to Here of Wigglesworth meeting the then Ireland coach Warren Gatland on the morning of a match and asking, "What are you planning? Will you play a rucking game or a continuity game?"
According to one of the backroom staff, there was a real air of finality last week in the build-up to Twickenham, though some players maintain the mood was actually still better than it had been throughout the taut, pressurised environment of the World Cup.
Adding to the end-of-era feel, some of the players had already learned of Simon Easterby's decision to retire from Test rugby, which had been mentioned by Ronan O'Gara in his captain's speech the night before the game. That Brian O'Driscoll was not in attendance in London did not bother the players unduly, for it was felt he did not want to impinge on O'Gara's captaincy.
That the non-playing captain, given a five-day holiday before resuming rehab on his torn hamstring, went to New York last weekend might seem alarming to some on the outside, but that did not unduly bother the players either. Unlike, say, Keith Wood, most players don't like attending games when injured, and O'Driscoll is one of those.
True to O'Gara's public utterances, in a frustrated response to the limitations of O'Sullivan's constraining, narrow kicking game against Wales, they were going to have a real go against England. But they were ill-prepared and ill-equipped for such a running game, and when that unravelled over the 80 minutes, O'Sullivan addressed the away dressingroom with a resigned air.
Saying he was unsure what the future held, he thanked all the players for the time they had worked together and wished them luck.
They had a good night and by Wednesday evening, around the time O'Sullivan's advisers released a statement announcing his resignation, most of the players received texts from the departing coach confirming the news.
O'Sullivan is expected to take time out with his family but while his Lions candidature now looks damaged beyond repair, he will not be short of job offers.
An English Premiership club, the USA, the IRB and even returning to the IRFU fold, where he remains in high regard, are all potential avenues of future employment.
Warren Gatland, after losing the Irish job, had four offers within three weeks.
In truth, it is a small market at the elite end of the global game when one considers there are only about 10 national head coaching jobs and four major leagues for frontline coaches.
Furthermore, Messrs Murphy, Jackson and Whelan, who last played the game in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, are ill-equipped to conduct the head hunting.
It is worth drawing a comparison with England, where the director of rugby, Rob Andrew, conducts reviews, head hunts and makes recommendations. As a recently retired international player who has managed and coached until even more recently in the professional era, he is more than qualified for such a role.
In contrast, Wigglesworth has nothing like the same qualifications and enjoys nothing like the same profile.
One man is abundantly qualified, namely Conor O'Shea. It would be interesting to imagine the possibilities if O'Shea - whose hiring by first the RFU and now the English Institute of Sport is a damning indictment of the IRFU hierarchy's reluctance to have their influence diluted - were Andrew's Irish counterpart right now.
Speaking during the week, O'Shea recommended the preference should always be for a home-grown, indigenous coach. If that is to be the way forward, then Declan Kidney is the glaringly obvious successor. His CV contains a list of successes with virtually every team he has coached.
Ironically, Kidney's "unsuitability" in part emanates from the flawed decision to foist him onto the international ticket as O'Sullivan's assistant in 2001, though whatever the pressure, he shouldn't have agreed to it himself. In any event, after brief dalliances with Ulster and the Celtic Dragons in Wales, his stint with Leinster and return to Munster didn't endear him to all in the IRFU or in the Leinster dressingroom.
Aside from Kidney, Michael Bradley has coached at every level in the Irish system.
Were Kidney promoted to Ireland coach, Bradley moved to Munster and, say, a promising young coach like Brian Walsh given the Connacht job, it would mean three new starts at the top of the pyramid. Instead, were the union to take the view an entirely fresh voice was required, and neither Kidney nor Bradley were chosen, it would be an indictment of the system as well as leaving it to stagnate further.
Having needlessly committed themselves to O'Sullivan before the World Cup, in their prevarication after the tournament, the IRFU find options abroad now reduced. Unlike them, most of the rest of the world does indeed "operate in four-year cycles".
The Italian and Welsh Unions did not hang about but went out to obtain two of the outstanding candidates post-World Cup, Nick Mallett and Gatland, while other coaches have since agreed new contracts with clubs, provinces, regions or franchises.
With the likes of John Mitchell, Wayne Smith, Jake White and all the other big names from abroad liable to follow the example of Howard, it could be that the union will eventually end up with a very familiar shortlist.
In addition to Kidney and Bradley, both Alan Gaffney (formerly Leinster assistant coach and Munster head coach) and Mike Ruddock (former Leinster coach) have either openly announced their candidature or given a non-denial denial.
Aside from re-energising the current squad, a new head coach can make an immediately positive impact in many other areas. In terms of selection, he can make the Irish squad more competitive and, at a stroke, players previously cast to the wilderness can feel they have a fair chance again - such as Shane Jennings, Leo Cullen, Geordan Murphy, Alan Quinlan, Bob Casey, Jeremy Staunton, Mike Ross and others based abroad - though, sadly, it's too late for others ostracised over the years.
A new coach will surely also have a more enlightened approach to his selection of the bench and employment of impact replacements as matches unfold. O'Sullivan's stubborn resistance to this increasingly effective modern-day ploy and inability to change games does not reflect well on him, though this would not be one of Kidney's strongest areas either.
Most of all, perhaps, the new coach can start working again with the provincial coaches and reopening the lines of communication between the top of the pyramid and the level immediately below. O'Sullivan, seemingly perceiving them as threats, scarcely had any dialogue with them.
This became one of the biggest problems in Irish rugby these past half-dozen years and more. Irish rugby's much-lauded provincial system is not being maximised, and in having allowed so much control to one voice the IRFU hierarchy stand indicted.
As important as the identity of a new coach will be that of those around him. There is a crying need for lost leaders, like O'Shea, Donal Lenihan, Ciarán Fitzgerald and Phil Orr, to be brought back into the fold, and one of them to be made team manager.
For all the need to have highly qualified back-up coaches, the union have to allow the new head coach flexibility in this. Forced marriages don't work, as was shown by the O'Sullivan-Kidney case history and as is still being shown in the less-than-harmonious English coaching ticket under Brian Ashton.
Perhaps the IRFU will learn from their many past mistakes in recent times, but one would not count on it.
