EDDIE O’SULLIVAN “He was a hard working coach who gave everything he had to the job” Pic: Sportsfile
Thanks for the memories
Gavin DuffyBEEP, BEEP. It’s 11.33pm last Wednesday night and my phone alerts me to a new message in my inbox. The text declares that ‘Eddie O’ is a gonner!’. It’s from my good friend Aiden Kelly from Foxford. If it weren’t for the fact that he wears fancy suits and has a business card and an e-mail address stating he is a solicitor, I would swear he is an employee of the IRFU! On more than one occasion it has been a call or a text message from Aiden that has informed me of my selection or non-selection for Ireland squads since my first involvement under Warren Gatland back in 2000.
To be honest, I didn’t believe it initially so opened up the laptop and checked out the latest breaking news in the sporting world. Right enough; Eddie O’Sullivan’s six and a half years tenure as head coach had come to a sudden end last Wednesday when news broke that the Cork native had ‘stepped down’ from his position. The powers that be have a tough job on their hands to replace the man who has guided Ireland through its most successful period in International rugby.
Eddie O’Sullivan was a coach who left nothing to chance; even his harshest critics over the last few months couldn’t deny that he was a hard working coach who gave everything he had to the job. He was extremely analytical and precise as to how he wanted to play the game and yet it was never complicated.
Through video analysis he could pin-point weaknesses in the opposition and it was always clear as to where, when, and how you would go about dismantling the opposition’s armoury. His ideas were rarely spur of the moment or off the cuff. It was quite the opposite in fact and one of my earliest encounters with Eddie left that imprint on me to this day.
During my first training camp with him as head coach we were given instructions as to how to attack a certain defence before being split into groups around the pitch to practice as told. Whether it was an eagerness to impress or just plain naivety I did something outside the prescribed box. I heard my name being yelled from the far end of the pitch: ‘Gavin Duffy! Do you think you can come up with something better in one morning after I have been thinking about it for two months! Stop trying to pull a bloody rabbit out of a hat’.
Of course I might not always have agreed with his selection policy, but whether or not you agreed with his game plan was almost irrelevant. You knew Eddie had done his homework and you knew he had thought about it more than you had.
STANDING BY FOR CAP NUMBER NINE
SPECULATION around Eddie O’Sullivan’s future was prevalent right throughout the 2008 Six Nations and the defeat to Wales at Croke Park sparked further cries for a change in management from the sports pages of all the national newspapers.
Having been with the squad throughout the following week and in the dressing room right up until the referee called time, it’s true to say that neither the players nor coaching staff, to their credit, allowed such talk to distract from the task at hand.
I was on standby due to the injury Geordan Murphy was trying to shake off in the lead-up to the game. Even though he had been passed fit early in the week, I was required to remain with the squad just in case his injury flared up in training.
We travelled to London on Thursday afternoon and arrived at the Penny Hill Park Hotel just before 4pm. The five star hotel, which is set in the leafy suburbs of Bagshot in Surrey, was base camp for the English rugby team during Clive Woodward’s reign as England’s head coach. In fact, so taken was Woodward with the place that he had a full size pitch built in the grounds of the hotel for the build-up to the 2003 World Cup!
After dinner, Tommy Bowe and myself availed of the spa and leisure facilities to relax, stretch out the muscles, and pass a bit of time.
The following morning I got up for breakfast at 9.45am feeling fresh and rejuvenated before assembling with the rest of the squad for the captain’s run-out at 10.45am.
After lunch it was a case of resting up and taking it easy. Ronan O’Gara took his first captain’s meeting as Irish skipper before dinner on the eve of the game and I was jealous of the other 22 guys in the room who would be taking the field the following day.
I felt a bit of a fraud collecting the match day socks and shorts from Rala’s (the kit man) room later that evening but as the most capped bag man in the history of the game would say, ‘always be prepared’!
He’s right of course as I’ve been in the standby position for Ireland a couple of times before and twice have been called up onto the bench the morning of the game. I would be prepared! I even stopped myself going up for seconds on the best pancakes I’ve had in a while at the pre-match meal before the game! Just in case I told myself. Just in case.
Alas, Geordan was okay. We concluded the warm-up and returned to the dressing room where upon the lads pulled on their jerseys and I pulled on my jacket. So near but yet so so far from getting cap number nine.
HARD TO KEEP OUR ENGLISH PATIENCE
THE 40-minute trip into Twickenham took over an hour – and that was with a police escort! It was nothing like the escorts offered by the French gendarmerie that we had come to take for granted during the World Cup last year where, God forbid, someone got in the way!
No, last Saturday week we travelled in the slow lane and although it was bumper to bumper most of the way there were cars going past us in the outside lane. We even stopped at red lights! One kind English gentleman in the back of a Mercedes even gave us the finger as he took off from the lights! The English may have the upper hand over the French on the field at the moment but the French win hands down off it...
