No way O’Sullivan could paper over all the cracks

SO it’s all Eddie O’Sullivan’s fault.

According to reports we are hearing down here in the south-west of France from armchair critics back home, Ireland would be already romping into the quarter-finals of the World Cup were it not for the fact that the head coach got this, that and the other all wrong.

The team plays rubbish so you sack the manager. That may be the way of things in English football but in more objective circles, sensible and rational people look at the broader picture.

Having done that where Ireland’s feeble World Cup challenge stands right now and facing into near certain elimination on Sunday, it will be seen that there are numerous other factors to consider before sending O’Sullivan to the guillotine.

Don’t get me wrong. He hasn’t done everything right, not by a long shot. I would say his biggest mistake was to prefer Andrew Trimble to Denis Hickie on the left wing in Paris.

The Ulsterman disappeared from sight for the first of Vincent Clerc’s two tries.

How much of this is hindsight? There was criticism — a lot of it over the top — for preferring Eoin Reddan to Peter Stringer and dropping Geordan Murphy from the bench — but not a whole lot about the Trimble-Hickie issue. And anyway, what coach or selection committee hasn’t got it badly wrong from time to time.

O’Sullivan has also been seen to be too austere at times, too great a believer in “camps” both at home and abroad (principally Poland!) which become boring and tedious for the players, especially those with wives and families. Significantly, their headquarters in Bordeaux are 20 minutes from the city centre. There’s little or nothing to do out there. Somebody suggested a good “p*** up” might do them the world of good, especially with nine days between the French and Argentine games.

How many people have examined the very real possibility that maybe this Irish squad and its management team have been around too long and outlived its usefulness.

The icons of the side, Brian O’Driscoll, Ronan O’Gara, Paul O’Connell, Denis Leamy haven’t performed; others, like Gordon D’Arcy, Shane Horgan, Peter Stringer, Marcus Horan, Donncha O’Callaghan and David Wallace haven’t stepped up to the plate as had been anticipated.

In a nutshell, maybe they just weren’t good enough and no coach could paper over the cracks.

A further problem for O’Sullivan is that he isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. There was uproar in rugby circles when the IRFU made the bizarre decision to extend his contract just before the World Cup. Again, though, I ask, who do you blame for that? Surely not the beneficiary of such largesse, rather you should aim your dagger at those so willing to distribute it.

Otherwise, there has been a deal of bias against him anyway. One-time friend and fellow worker in the cause of US rugby, George Hook, has been scathing in his comments about O’Sullivan for several years. Many in the written media can’t wait to see the back of him. I got a text from a colleague while on the Paris-Bordeaux TGV train on Saturday advising me to “come home out of there with the Irish team — but leave Eddie O behind.” That message sums up for me the public reaction to Ireland’s dismal World Cup campaign. Hammer the coach and forget about the players.

The fact is that this squad is by miles the most expensive and best prepared ever put on a rugby pitch by the IRFU. They have every conceivable fitness and coaching facility at their immediate disposal. And a mini survey I’ve been conducting with the players reveals that they themselves know that there is far more to the Irish crisis than any perceived shortcomings in the coach.

I met up yesterday with two realists on the subject.

“We can only be coached and prepared up to a certain point and then we have to take to the field and boss it ourselves,” reasoned Jerry Flannery. “It would be such a simple thing to be able to blame it on a single person but it’s not. It’s up to the players. Our preparation has been the best there can be and then we have gone out and made stupid mistakes.

“I think the criticism of Eddie O’Sullivan is unfair. I don’t see how he can be singled out so much. Eddie and the coaches don’t tell us to go out and drop ball and so if we drop the ball, that’s our fault. It’s the same in any rugby side.”

Donncha O’Callaghan sees the situation in a very similar light.

“It comes down to the players. We haven’t been performing as well as we need to. To reach the pinnacle of your career and not produce the performance you know you’re capable of is very disappointing. We almost feel like apologising for our performances. Nobody goes out to play poorly.”

Then there are those people who know for sure there is unrest in the Irish camp, that they’re fighting among themselves, that they don’t get on with each other, that they want to come home and so on. Ask any of these hurlers on the ditch to be specific and they just shrug their shoulders and answer lamely things like “there must be something going on”. It’s all hugely disappointing — but this crisis is not down to one man. Far from it.