Gaffney hopeful despite results

IF your name is Eddie and you fancy being an international rugby coach, this might not be the best time to apply.

Here in Ireland, Eddie O’Sullivan has been feeling the draught but that’s nothing compared to the pressure under which his Australian counterpart Eddie Jones is currently operating.

His fate, and his prospects of leading the Wallabies into the 2007 World Cup in France, will be decided on December 9 after a meeting of the Australian Board has deliberated on a recent run of poor results that has seen the national side lose eight of their last nine matches.

There’s a strong lobby that wants to see the end of Jones’s sometimes controversial reign and if he goes, so too, in all likelihood, will his assistant Alan Gaffney, who up to last spring was coach of the Munster team.

The chastened Wallabies are now safely back home and soaking up the sunshine at the end of a long season.

Gaffney, however, has spent the past week in Ireland catching up with old friends along with his wife Lorraine and tomorrow night he plans to be in Musgrave Park to watch the Celtic League clash of Munster and Ulster.

He will do so in the knowledge that his job is very much on the line but still hopeful that himself, Jones and the equally beleaguered Aussie captain George Gregan will be around in two years time when Australia will be hoping to get their hands on the William Webb Ellis trophy for the third time.

“Results might suggest otherwise but Eddie is a very good coach and by far the best in Australia,” Gaffney said in Limerick yesterday. “Before I got involved, I suppose some people thought he might have been too tough a taskmaster. But I haven’t found that. He’s demanding but in the job he has, you’ve got to be like that. He doesn’t ask anyone to do what he doesn’t do himself.

“He’s an insomniac. He’s up at 4.30-5.00 o’clock in the morning and works very long days. He’s methodical and has a good rugby brain. I had heard that some of the players may not have been totally happy but they are at the moment and virtually to a man, they’re totally supportive of him.”

Gaffney accepts that Jones and himself will be judged on results, hence their current predicament. But he’s not despondent by any means and insists: “I don’t think we’re far away. We’re making more line breaks than any other team but we’re not finishing them off. We don’t have the fliers like the Rokocokos or Habanas of this world who can score tries from 90 metres.

“We scored all our tries in the Tri Nations from 35 metres in. We played South Africa in Perth and Habana twice ran turnovers in from 90 metres.”

Gaffney isn’t a man to use injuries as an excuse but the fact is that Australia came to this side of the world short a whole host of top rugby players. He allows that it is “part explanation” for their difficulties, pointing out that “when you have Vickerman, Lyons, Stephen Hoiles, who is an outstanding young back-rower, Stephen Larkham, Flatley, Mortlock, Rathbone, Ben Tune all missing, it’s an obvious handicap. Larkham is a great player and an enormous loss. You can’t knock the way he plays, you can’t take the flair out of people.”

Even more fascinating is what the future holds for George Gregan. You know immediately what Gaffney wants but there’s also a shadow of doubt as he responds: “Is the desire still there? It is but he’s been hammered by the Australian press. He’s played 118 Tests, started 115 of them, 50 as captain, a phenomenal achievement. And it should be borne in mind that George hasn’t been playing behind a scrum that’s going forward.”

Alan will be in the air on the way back to Australia on Friday next when the ARU decide whether to remain with the Jones-Gaffney axis.

Managing director Gary Flowers has said the ARU’s upcoming Wallabies performance review will not be a witch-hunt.

Two of the suggested replacements for Jones have spoken off the record and indicated that change now would be (in the words of one) “a hospital pass” and (in the words of the other) “a throne for a dwarf.”

On the balance of things, you suspect and, of course, hope that these positive vibes have a solid foundation but Alan Gaffney has to be realistic.

“If Eddie Jones is sacked, then there’s a strong chance that I’ll go too,” he says. “It’s been called by certain sections of the press that this should happen. The one thing I didn’t miss when I was away from home was the Australian rugby press. A lot of the traditional rugby people wouldn’t be supportive of what they write but there are those who believe everything they say. I wouldn’t get the job if Eddie went, they’ll go for somebody like Ewen McKenzie. He’s been coaching the Waratahs and has done well but it’s been a forward based control they had in the Super Twelves with Vickerman and Harrison in the second-row. They were very good at what they did but I think Ewen would admit that he’d need a bit more time. I’m 58 and too old for that sort of thing.”