By TOM ENGLISH
IN the words of Philip Browne, chief executive of the IRFU, the World Cup was "a blip".
How good must it be to have a boss as understanding as Philbers?
Wouldn't it be great if we all had employers who dismissed our every blunde
r - however enormous - with a shrug and some lovely words of support. What's that you say? You shredded some vital documents? Ah, don't worry about it.
You called our biggest client a gobshite? Shucks, we'll get over it.
You made a pass at his wife, insulted his children and ran over his dog? A blip, my boy. Nothing more than a blip.
I don't buy it.
I don't for a second believe that Philip Browne is as calm as he pretends to be. So he's given Eddie O'Sullivan a vote of confidence. What else was he supposed to do? He was one of the bright sparks who awarded the coach a new contract before the World Cup even started. To express even an iota of doubt about him now is to open himself up to questions about his own incompetence. And there was no way Philbers was going down that road.
A vote of confidence from the IRFU? I remember Murray Kidd got one of those once. We'd just lost to Italy at Lansdowne Road and we were in the Burlington Hotel that night. A union bigwig at the time came over to where the reporters were drinking and said, 'lads, the speculation is rife that Murray is going to be sacked. I can categorically deny that'. Two days later Kidd was sacked. Somebody in the IRFU told Ned Van Esbeck of the Irish Times before they told poor Murray. The faces in the union might have changed since - not much - but the culture is the same. It's my view that O'Sullivan is one bad Six Nations championship away from being dropped, long-term contract or no long-term contract.
O'Sullivan is lying low at the moment. I don't blame him.
But there are a few questions I wouldn't mind asking him when he recovers from what has been the most chastening experience of his professional career.
In no particular order...
1. Is it true that Alan Quinlan was reprimanded for telling Trevor Brennan (who subsequently told the nation) that he wasn't all that happy with the way the World Cup had gone?
2. Is it true that when Sinead Kissane of TV3 asked him on Sunday if he was now going to consider his future he sent his media manager, Karl Richardson, over to Kissane to complain to her about an unfair question?
3. When it was obvious that Ronan O'Gara had lost all sense of control in his game against France and Argentina why wasn't he taken off the field and Plan B put in operation?
4. Was there a Plan B?
5. Before the World Cup did he ever ask himself this question: 'If Rog is not playing well what do we do?'
6. Does he admit that the sentence about O'Gara's supposed gambling debts in L'Equipe would have died a death and therefore caused the player no mental anguish had he (O'Sullivan) not made a rather hysterical response to it and made it an international story?
7. Does he accept now that it was a throwaway line in L'Equipe and not the "French plot" he spoke about? Does he accept that he lost a sense of perspective that week and that it caused untold damage to his out-half?
8. Would he admit that parachuting Eoin Reddan into the French game having given him virtually no game time in the last two years despite having opportunities to do so was a failure of his management?
9. What would he say if somebody compared his obsession with his first XV, a seemingly untouchable crew, with Matt Williams's approach at Leinster which was also all about the first XV to the detriment of the other squad players?
10. Does he remember criticising Matt Williams for this approach?
11. Does he remember saying that his predecessor Warren Gatland had got distracted by contractual negotiations in his final days as Irish coach?
12. Does he think the same thing happened to him?
13. Has the money, the profile and the power blunted the hard edge he used to have?
14. Hand on heart can he say he was as focused on this World Cup as he was on the last?
15. Hand on heart can he say that his team played with as much passion in this World Cup as they did in the last? If so, how he does he explain Georgia's and Argentina's greater will to win?
16. Does he not have even the slightest doubt that he has lost the dressing room?
17. If the story about Alan Quinlan being told to button his lip is true then how does he know if the players are telling him the truth when they say they are behind him? How does he know they're not just saying it because they fear him rather than wholeheartedly support him?
18. Four years ago, after beating Argentina in the 2003 World Cup, he said that every international coach loses their nerve sooner or later. Through his reluctance to change his starting line-up when it was obvious many players were struggling and his apparent aversion to making early switches while games were underway is it not possible to interpret that as a loss of nerve?
19. Has he surrounded himself with yes men?
20. Given the horrors of the last month does he intend to change anything about his team or his style of management? Anything at all?
We could go on.
We could all come up with 100 questions and they are questions that will not go away.
