Napoleon’s rules of sports management

“IS HE lucky?”

Bonaparte’s dictum on promotion to management echoes still, a couple of centuries on from the post-battle press conference in which he issued it. Every sports coach knows how true it is, too.

There’s probably more for Steve Staunton and Eddie O’Sullivan to chew on in Napoleon’s other comment on management, though: “A leader is a dealer in hope.”

The fact that the two men were a study in contrasts last week shows that only one of them understands the truth inherent in that statement, however.

Staunton had picked up a last-gasp victory away from home deep in injury time. O’Sullivan had given up a last-gasp defeat at home having led with two minutes on the clock.

Yet perception of those results ran contrary to the usual expectations. Staunton’s victory over San Marino has all the standing of a ten-shilling note, while there was a general sense of bad luck when it came to Ireland’s late, late loss to France in Croke Park.

And much of the perception surrounding those games stems from the spin both managers put out afterwards. Staunton stressed the positive — that Ireland had shown great character in battling back to snatch a win. O’Sullivan acknowledged the negative, conceding that the occasion and the hype surrounding the first rugby game in Croke Park had affected his players, while adding that the loss of Brian O’Driscoll had had a more detrimental effect than had been expected..

Yet O’Sullivan was able to offer hope in his comments with a couple of implicit messages: the team will be better the next time because the factor that damaged their performance will be gone. The return of the team’s best player will also be a plus.

Staunton, meanwhile, invited ridicule for talking up his side after the late winner against San Marino — particularly the suggestion that Ireland are usually stronger in March. He might have been better off stating the obvious: that the team were below par.

This would have been somewhat contrary to expectations: it’s one of the unwritten rules of sports management that the gaffer never criticises but always remains resolutely upbeat. By following the usual path, however, Staunton suffered general ridicule. Maybe he should have listened to another Bonaparte saying (“I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other”).

Of course, the Little Corporal was also a dictator who didn’t really believe in Cabinet government. If, like most of us, you subscribe to general democratic principles, then you could see Staunton and O’Sullivan as the executive outposts of their respective legislative branches, the FAI and the IRFU. And then the relative standing of their comments makes a lot more sense.

Brendan Fanning’s outstanding new book “From There To Here — Irish Rugby In The Professional Era” outlines the often difficult introduction of professionalism into Irish rugby. Not money: professionalism at all levels, players, coaches — and administrators.

Fanning details the profound process of change the IRFU had to engage in, and crucially, it was culture change, rather than regime change, which took a long time. There were plenty of bloodstains left on the glossy table surfaces in the IRFU committee rooms, but now the treatment of Irish professional rugby players is held up as a valid template for every rugby country.

Just look across the water at the ongoing friction between Premiership rugby clubs and the RFU, with the Irish solution of central contracts now being mooted as a potential solution. Eddie O’Sullivan can make the odd mistake, and his team can lose the odd game, but those are regarded by much of the public as simply the vicissitudes of elite sport rather than inherent flaws in the machine.

The FAI doesn’t have that goodwill to draw on, hence the snorts of derision when Steve Staunton says you can’t question his players’ attitude. The former Liverpool star isn’t being taken seriously as a manager, and as he’s a representative of the FAI, that organisation suffers collateral damage.

One perception feeds the other.

Which might just answer the first question we borrowed from Bonaparte.

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