Mick DoyleUnlike many former Irish rugby coaches, Mick Doyle, who died this week at the age of 63, maintained a high public profile long after he led Ireland to their famous Triple Crown victory in 1985. After his successful career as a coach with Leinster and Ireland in the 1980s, he became one of the first, if not the first, former-player-coach pundits in print and television.
As much for his prowess on the rugby field both as an international wing forward and then national rugby coach, his opinionated but personable style as a critic and analyst in the Evening Herald, Sunday Independent and on RTÉ ensured that his light never dimmed until his premature death in a car accident.
He was an inspirational coach, but a man whose gregarious nature never allowed him take himself that seriously, while his occasional acerbic observations on the game of rugby and certain players who caught his attention for the wrong reasons could be harsh.
Latterly his observations were usually tempered by a home-spun wisdom and easy access to endless anecdotes.
He was a lover of company and invariably the centre of it, a drawing presence that enjoyed centre-stage, be it around the dinner table or behind a microphone. He was accessible and an excellent communicator, and his sense of humour was well developed but not always politically correct, a roguish part of his personality that earned him admirers as well as critics.
An anecdote told about him earlier this week had the coach in the changing rooms after a Sunday session with the Irish squad at some point in the early 1980s, when the trouble in Northern Ireland was still boiling.
Jim McCoy, an Ulster Protestant and a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, who would have had to make tight security arrangements whenever he travelled south of the Border, was one of the last players to come out of the showers that morning. As he walked across the changing room, the only voice was that of the coach. "Hurry up, McCoy, or you'll be late for Mass," growled Doyle. A chancy comment, but that was "Doyler". His "Give it a lash" philosophy on the rugby pitch was also applicable off it.
He was born on October 13th, 1940, in Currow, a parish just outside Castleisland, Co Kerry, his father, Michael J.P. Doyle and mother, Nell (née Dennehy), ran a grocery, hardware shop and bar in the town as well as a poultry farm. Mother, father, Mick and his younger brother, Tom, grew up locally before Mick enrolled in Newbridge College.
There he demonstrated both an aptitude for rugby and a formidable academic ability that would bring him into UCD to study veterinary medicine and then on to Cambridge and Edinburgh Universities. In tandem with his burgeoning rugby career he also became one of the foremost authorities in Ireland on poultry.
On the rugby field he played for Garryowen, Blackrock College, UCD and Cambridge, before going on to earn his first international cap in 1965. His career at that level was relatively short but condensed and he played 20 straight internationals before retiring at 28.
In that final year of international rugby both he and Tom lined out for Ireland, which remained a great source of pride for both players.
He continued to build his veterinary practice and stayed involved in club rugby before joining the Leinster provincial set-up as a selector. In 1979 he became coach to the team and began a productive run of years.
Leinster rugby went on to win three successive interprovincial titles in 1979, 1980 and 1981, then shared the championship in 1982 before winning it again in 1983.
Throughout that period, the team never lost a match.
He succeeded Willie John McBride as national coach on an IRFU majority decision of 3-2 and took over the Irish side for the 1984-85 season.
It was during that year's rugby that his "Give it a lash policy" handsomely paid dividends. A raft of new players including Brendan Mullin, Michael Bradley and Philip Matthews were brought into the Irish squad, while Paul Dean was preferred to Tony Ward at out-half.
Doyle's logic was that because Dean couldn't kick like Ward, Ireland would be forced to run the ball, and that's what he instructed the team to do. It was a considerable change from the traditional Irish style of forward-dominated play and it worked.
The right wing on that side, Trevor Ringland, recalled during the week that at the team talk before Doyle's first match in charge, his instructions were simple.
"Boys, I want you to run the ball, and if that doesn't work, I want you to still run it," he said. Ireland emerged at the end of the season with a Triple Crown and Five Nations Championship title, memorably made possible by Michael Kiernan's drop goal against England.
While the following season proved hugely disappointing Doyle remained in situ for the inaugural World Cup in New Zealand in 1987 and on the day of the opening dinner for the tournament suffered a heart attack.
Stubbornly, he recovered quickly and returned to guide Ireland through to the quarter-finals.
After the competition he stepped down as Irish coach, but with the publication of his biography, Doyler, in 1991 and his move into the media, he continued in the public eye. Five years later he was struck down with a brain haemorrhage, spent four weeks in a coma and for some time was partially paralysed and in a wheelchair.
Undaunted he fought back and in a second autobiography, Zero Point One Six: Living in Extra Time, he wrote of his life and fight back to health. The title came from the statistical chance of surviving the haemorrhage he had suffered.
With his second wife, Mandy (he was previously married to Lynne, née Thompson) and four children, he continued to enjoy good health, forgoing the penchant of his earlier years of burning the candle at both ends. Until the end he remained a raconteur and a man of intelligence who generated laughter, not quite giving it a lash as in his youth but enjoying life fully.
He is survived by his wife, Mandy, and their daughter, Emma, and Andrew, Sharon and Amanda from his first marriage to Lynne.
Mick Doyle: born October 13th, 1940; died May 11th, 2004