Lenihan: Radical overhaul needed, but will IRFU cede power?

Donal Lenihan today calls for a radical overhaul of the way Irish rugby is run as the game moves into its next phase, 18 years after the advent of professionalism.

In today’s Irish Examiner Inside Rugby column, Lenihan reveals the precise make-up of the Irish Rugby Football Union’s blueprint for the future of the game in this country. And while he applauds the imminent formation of a Professional Game Board to manage the professional game on behalf of the IRFU, as well as the appointment of a Performance Director, the former Ireland captain and team manager questions how much autonomy will be given to the person in the new role and whether the IRFU committee men are ready to cede power to a more professionally experienced group within the governing body.

“We are told that the appointment of both is imminent and that the approval of the IRFU committee to formulate the Professional Board has already been granted. That is a step in the right direction,” Lenihan writes.

“Attracting the quality needed to fill that all-important role of Performance Director will ultimately depend on how much autonomy the successful candidate is offered. I just wonder how much those in power are willing to let go.”

Lenihan says it is time for change and warns any further delay in appointing both the new board and the performance director could compromise both entities as well as whoever is given the job of coaching the national team through to the 2015 World Cup.

Current incumbent Declan Kidney will see his contract expire during the summer and Lenihan writes: “His fate is still in the hands of the National Team Review Group. It would have been far better if the Performance Director was in place at this stage and that he, working in tandem with the newly constituted Game Board, would either reappoint Kidney to the next World Cup or decide who was going to replace him.

“We could now end up with a management team in situ for the 2015 event in England, none of whom were appointed by the newly proposed professional leadership group. That is hardly ideal.”