O’Sullivan hails backroom boys as new Ireland hit the heights

AT A TIME when the Ireland team and its coaching staff can enjoy the good times, Eddie O’Sullivan and his coaching ticket are entitled to feel a little giddy at the dizzy heights they’ve reached in recent weeks.

Twelve months ago, the portents were bleak, with talk of a deep-seated malaise in the Irish camp, of O’Sullivan’s team playing in a straitjacket, even calls for the coach’s head. In fairness to O’Sullivan, he asked the rugby public to be patient as he began setting the seeds for a new high-tempo off-loading game similar to the All Blacks. The game was changing, becoming more attack than defence-oriented, and since spring the Irish performance graph hasn’t stopped rising.

“It might be no harm for a few days to get giddy, but we do have to be realistic,” said O’Sullivan yesterday. “It was a good victory. There was nothing wrong with that Australian team on Sunday. They weren’t missing too many players, they weren’t experimenting. Whatever you can say about South Africa, missing some players and trying players out, I don’t think you can say that about Australia.”