Interview - Eddie O'Sullivan: Johnny Watterson talks to the Ireland coach, who takes the opportunity to confront issues that have incensed him.
In his heart Eddie O'Sullivan believes somewhere along the road over the last three and a half years the Eddie O'Sullivan he knew was not the same man he was reading about. He wasn't alone in seeing what he believed was a significant shift in the presentation of him as a personality who coached the Irish rugby team. Not so much misunderstood as misrepresented.
When he thought and acted logically in relation to his team he saw caricatures appearing. When he explained motives and decisions or presented himself to the media, he read beaten-down versions, incorrect assumptions and at the centre of it a man who was evolving from a popular coach into a tin-pot tyrant.
"For the last six months we had a rough patch in the autumn and suddenly I have become a demon and a despot," he explains.
He also noticed a shift in how some of his players were being treated, read stories about his relationships with key individuals that he maintains could not have appeared in print without the helping hand of malicious gossip and agenda. The language used to describe him and his players was qualitatively changing and, he believes, was not only harmful, but also destructive.
At a point last year it began to eat at him a little. Friends and family pointed it out. He thought about it. He looked at what was being said more carefully. Then he decided to act, to clean out his locker.
Those close to O'Sullivan know his character does not lend itself to letting loose ends flap in the wind or allow small itches to fester. O'Sullivan is not many things but there are commonly known traits that define him. He acts. He makes decisions. He is ambitious. He is organised. He works hard. He likes to be in control of his job and with regard to the Irish team that means in control of everything that affects him.
O'Sullivan is not sentimental in picking his team. He is not Matt Williams, the garrulous Australian, who liked to talk, enjoyed the social whirl of being the top man, liked to be liked and was. He's not Mike Ruddock, who would lean his ursine frame against the bar in Bective and feed himself and his company drink and stories of Welsh club rugby atrocities in the 1980s. O'Sullivan is erudite, self-sufficient and articulate. For some, that's good enough not to like him. But that is not what has bothered him over the past months. That is not what keeps the man, who doesn't sleep much, awake at nights.
LATE LAST YEAR O'Sullivan put in a phone call to Glen Killane, head of sport in RTÉ. He wanted to, needed to speak to him for what he believed was deeply unsatisfactory coverage of the Irish frontrow and his captain Brian O'Driscoll. He let it lie a while. Then he acted. "I said: 'Glen, look, there are a few things I want to talk to you about.' I said: 'I know you are covering rugby and you do it fantastically.' I said: 'People are there to criticise, analyse and construct.' But I also said to him, 'there are certain things I don't think you should say'.
"I had an issue about the language used, about calling the Irish frontrow crap. My problem was that the Irish frontrow are not crap. They do a good job. They try hard. If the scrum is a problem. . . was it because the tighthead was getting bored in, were they too high or did they not step at the right time?
"That's analysis. Calling the Irish frontrow crap or introducing the Irish captain as Golden Balls after he had just won the man-of-the-match award against England . . . I don't think that's right.
"You know, here's Brian O'Driscoll. He scored the key try of the match against England. He's had an outstanding performance and he's captain of the Irish team and he's called Golden Balls. I wouldn't do it to anybody myself. I said it to Glen. I said, 'how would you like your son to be called crap on television'?"
At the time it was said O'Sullivan had asked for George Hook to be removed. Killane confirmed the meeting took place, but denied there had been a call for Hook's head. "No. No. Look , I'm not going to tell RTÉ what to do. I know George Hook is hugely popular and I know George Hook very well, but I never, ever asked RTÉ to get rid of George Hook," says O'Sullivan.
"All I said was that if you are talking about the team there is some language I'd prefer you wouldn't use. I said it's up to you and I gave him the examples. He (Killane) said that it wasn't fair and shouldn't have happened.
"I pointed out that Brian O'Driscoll is generous with RTÉ and with his time and if there is anybody who puts on a green shirt and puts his body on the line, it is Brian O'Driscoll.
"He has never played for Ireland any less than 110 per cent and he comes off after a game man-of-the-match, beaten England, fantastic performance and he's introduced to the Irish public as Golden Balls. You know, maybe I'm a prude. But Brian O'Driscoll can't go to RTÉ. That's my job. I need to do that for him. I did."
Was it the language or the dismissive attitude? "It was a combination. If they want to criticise the Irish frontrow they analyse it. The public want to know why the Irish frontrow is under pressure. Because they are crap is not a good reason. That was the issue. It was the abusive language and the dismissive nature of it. I didn't go to Glen Killane after the Six Nations. I let the dust settle and said, 'here's my thoughts'. In fairness he agreed."
THIS IS O'Sullivan's fifth Six Nations Championship in charge. He'd like to tear into the championship in a high gear as Leinster and Munster did in their recent European Cup games, but he knows it's not like that. He understands the public expectations are coming off the provinces' performances more so than the poor autumn series. But it's the autumn fall-out that has encouraged him to lead a counter-offensive and challenge his detractors to, as he might put it himself, front up.
"I've been coaching this team for four years now. I've pretty much coached the same way. But for the last six months we had a rough patch in the autumn and suddenly the accusations are all doom and gloom and I am a bad person. I am unapproachable. I am a nasty guy. That is the way some people try and portray me. It is unfair in the sense that if I was doing it for three and a half years and was okay why has it become catastrophic?
"I am very clear on what I want. I'm clear on how we should do things. I'm very clear with people when I am dealing with them. I tell them exactly what we need to do, how I would like it done. That's leadership. Management. What I have to smile at is that for three and a half years it was dandy and in six months catastrophic. I'm not the despot I'm depicted as.
"Friends and family around would say they're really painting a terrible image of you. Even the players . . . I'm not saying I'm a laugh-a-minute person. That's not me. But, at the same time, I'm a professional rugby coach. I do my job the way I've always done it and I'm not going to change because people call me a despot."
The tyrant comparisons emerged when O'Sullivan began appearing at the top table on his own. Seated in front of the phalanx of microphones, the image was of a man alone, a powerful man with a strong character, who had dispensed with those who used to sit next to him. Declan Kidney had taken on Munster, Brian O'Brien had retired and Brian O'Driscoll simply didn't attend. O'Sullivan understands body language.
He nods insofar as he understands and disagrees that the choreography of his media conferences combined with his robust personality could have been construed as the coach controlling what went out. He is also bemused at how fanciful theories sprung from it all.
"I'm not isolated at all," he says. "I've a strong staff around me and a very strong group of players. I explained when Brian O'Brien stepped back there was a different manager and then Declan went. Mike Ford went because he wanted to be head coach of Saracens.
"I was gutted. We'd agreed he'd stay until the World Cup and it was spun that I drove him out. I've plenty of support.
"Just because I sit at the table on my own means nothing. The truth is the buck does stop with me. I'm the guy people ask questions of. That was evident when Brian and Declan were there. No one asked them anything. You would think the media would be more discerning and say, 'okay we know why he's sitting there on his own and we know there is a lot going on around him'."
O'Sullivan may be taking a risk striking out. But, as always, there are choices and his instincts are to confront issues, to clear his own head and satisfy his own sense of propriety and even justice.
A few years ago, when the debate surrounding Ronan O'Gara and David Humphreys was debated in every house over Sunday lunch, Humphreys was described in print as a coward. O'Sullivan conveyed his anger at what he understood to be a slur on a model professional player.
"It's funny," he says. "But it does worry me a bit about sports journalism. It's okay to criticise players when they are playing, but to personalise it . . . I was very upset with one of the guys who was making a case for Ronan O'Gara when he called David Humphreys a coward.
"I was incensed. I thought it was an entirely despicable thing to do. David Humphreys has played for his country over 50 times. To call him a coward is appalling. You can go down that bargain basement way of doing things, but I think it's wrong. I really think it's wrong."
OTHER ISSUES have been an irritation. Wrong things as he sees them; the training camp being likened to Guantanamo Bay; the touchline bust up with Ronan O'Gara after the Australian match when he was taken off. O'Sullivan doesn't like the collage that is building up around him. Doesn't want to allow those images sit together and coalesce until they form something mythical, something that might be impossible to challenge further down the road.
"After the match (against Australia), Ronan was disappointed because he was taken off," he says. "He was upset as players usually are. It was like, 'look, this is why I took you off'. He said, 'well I thought I was doing this, doing that'. There'd be no name calling. It would never degenerate like that. Just two professional people working and with Ronan that time it turned into a training pitch bust-up which was nonsense, absolute nonsense.
"It goes back to my point that in that moment in time, it was convenient to take something like that and turn it into something it wasn't, which depicted me as something else. Then Guantanamo Bay. The training camp was the same as it always was. The only thing that wasn't happening is that we weren't playing well on the pitch."
The cynics will say Eddie is reeling in the media, trying to put manners on an area where he has little real control. Some will say he's whinging; some will say he's showing stress fractures, that his complaints prove his sense of needing control. What they cannot say is that he is phony or out of character.
"If I have a problem, I'll front up to it. I won't let it drift," he says. "Firstly I feel that the team things were not as bad as everybody said and secondly I think I'm not as a bad a person as everybody thought. I thought there is an opportunity to put the record straight. It was the right thing to do.
"It's funny," he adds. "I am often said to be ambitious and competitive. The pity in Ireland is that is sometimes seen as a dirty word. Everyone should have ambition. It's a good thing. I like people to look on me and say there is a guy who works very hard and I respect how he does his job. I don't mind if they say, 'I don't like him very much. I wouldn't like to spend dinner with him.' That's less important with me.
"When people are looking inside from the outside, there are things I want them to see. That's how I am. I don't hide that. Being competitive and ambitious are two good things to be in your life."
