On Rugby: Perhaps it was inevitable that, after a four-year World Cup cycle, Irish rugby would enter a period of relative flux and uncertainty. Nevertheless, so much about the game is up in the air at the moment that 2004 promises to be the most pivotal and potentially turbulent year since the first troublesome, teething years of professionalism.

The one aspect of Eddie O'Sullivan's tenure which cannot be questioned is his work ethic. No Irish coach can ever have devoted such a volume of time and energy to the post.

After such a hectic calendar year he was entitled to a breather. Yet when he took a well-earned "holiday" last week in advance of yet another Irish training camp in Citywest yesterday and today, it's doubtful whether he would have been able to switch off entirely.

O'Sullivan has until the end of the season to finalise the most pressing concern of his management back-up team to see him through to the 2007 World Cup.

An unwanted hiccup in all of that is the position of fitness advisor Mike McGurn, whom O'Sullivan had asked to remain on for the next four years despite offers from Leicester and Sale, but who is now being offered a pay-off by the IRFU for incurring its wrath over comments in a newspaper article.

Then there is the nomination of his captain and the composition of his team for the Six Nations, choices already undermined by the retirement of Keith Wood and the loss, through injury, of Geordan Murphy and Denis Hickie. Interlinked with all of these decisions are the various conundrums facing the IRFU, not least with regard to the 14 front-line players who will be out of contract at the end of the season and have yet to re-sign (or even be approached for that matter).

Added to that will be the tasks of employing long-term management structures and the right personnel at provincial level, somehow forcing the hand of a shilly-shallying Government over the vexed issue of Lansdowne Road and maintaining both the four provinces and the All Ireland League.

To begin with, Team Ireland. To compound the uncertainty of McGurn, also missing in Citywest were Malcolm O'Kelly and Anthony Horgan, following the decidedly unusual public censuring and disciplining of the two players for their tardy arrival at a Sunday morning weigh-in at the culmination of the Lanzarote training week - also billed as warm weather training for the Six Nations, which sounds a little bit like an oxymoron - and the ripple effect it may or may not have.

To be honest, this disciplining may have provoked the most eyebrow-raising but is probably the least of O'Sullivan's problems. There is sympathy amongst the players for the two players involved but also for the management's stance.

There is also a common thread here with McGurn's state of limbo, in that each case incurred the anger of the IRFU fitness director Dr Liam Hennessy, a long-standing friend of O'Sullivan's.

The current impasse regarding McGurn is far more problematic. The irreverent Irish physio granted an interview to Gavin Mairs of the Belfast Telegraph in semi-final week of the World Cup in which he confirmed that he had rejected offers from Leicester and Sale (at a basic salary of around £80,000) to accept O'Sullivan's offer of a four-year extension with Ireland and a more hands-on role.

In the interview, McGurn claimed the Irish players were only achieving 60 to 70 per cent of their fitness at the World Cup, and wasn't shy about blaming the provincial fitness coaches. This is ironic, given the provinces had far less time with the players than he and Team Ireland had during 2004 and, at best, his comments were self-promoting and injudicious.

Senior IRFU figures have traditionally been overly sensitive about the media but to McGurn's credit, he declined overtures to hang the journalist in question and claim he was misquoted, and he has since rejected an offer of a pay-off from the IRFU chief executive Philip Browne. Should it really have come to this? McGurn is very popular with the players and his removal would surely undermine O'Sullivan's planning.

It's funny, isn't it, how the IRFU is so quick to censure and even remove offending players or fitness coaches yet there is no public censuring of Leinster's chief executive Mick Dawson and team manager Ken Ging for the Felipe Contepomi fiasco and the flawed marketing and promotion of Leinster's Heineken Cup game against Biarritz at Lansdowne Road?

The union would be far better off devoting its time and financial offers to the 14 players who will be out of contract at the end of the season - a process that usually begins 18 months to two years before contracts expire in professional soccer, not six months.

The likes of Brian O'Driscoll (linked with Biarritz and Toulouse), Paul O'Connell (Leicester and elsewhere), Denis Hickie, Ronan O'Gara, Peter Stringer and O'Kelly (all linked with French clubs) to name but six, have or surely will be approached by spendthrift French or English club owners.

The indications are that O'Sullivan is being encouraged to bide his time regarding the make-up of his management staff, all of whom are also under contract until the end of the season. What will become of Declan Kidney? Losing him to teaching or England, or even an office-based coaching/technical role, would be faintly ridiculous. The IRFU probably wants to see how the province's coaching positions pan out, with Alan Solomons' three-year contract at Ulster coming to an end. IRFU figures also have plans to move Michael Bradley into Munster, even though this looks premature.

Maintaining the famed "structures" has become an even more difficult financial balancing act, but abandoning Connacht (as some leading union figures still want to do) or the All Ireland League (higher on the agenda now with the impending completion of AIB's current sponsorship deal) would be retrograde steps. No two ways about it.

In the circumstances, a year of relative consolidation wouldn't be so bad with, say, Ireland holding their own in the Six Nations (which includes daunting trips to Paris and London), the smooth transition and evolution of newly contracted management teams at national and provincial levels, the retention of all Ireland's out-of-contract, front-line players with the provinces, the ongoing funding of all four proud provinces of Ireland, some concrete decision regarding the redevelopment of Lansdowne Road, and, if nothing else, the retention of at least an All Ireland League first division.

It's going to require men of vision and ambition to make all of this happen. Otherwise, there could be trouble ahead.