An IRFU spokesperson yesterday denied suggestions that the six-man sub-committee that decided to remove Warren Gatland as Irish coach without this being sanctioned by the full committee was not entitled to do so.
Some union committee believe that the sub-committee acted beyond its powers and the vexed matter is likely to come up for discussion at Thursday's monthly meeting of the full committee.
Some rank-and-file committee members are angry as they feel they were not informed of the sub-committee's actions at last month's meeting on Thursday, November 29th. According to the notes of one committee member, when the matter of Gatland's contractual review was brought up, the meeting was informed that negotiations were ongoing. Strictly speaking, this was true, although the negotiations by that stage centred entirely around Gatland's departure package as the sub-committee had already made their decision to remove Gatland and informed him of this the day before. One committee member describes this as "disingenuous", especially as the rest of the full IRFU committee heard about Gatland's departure on radio the next day.
"It is questionable whether the sub-committee were actually given the terms of reference to do what they did without seeking ratification from the general committee," said one committee member.
When asked about this at the time, the IRFU chief executive Philip Browne maintained that the sub-committee had been given these terms of reference at a previous monthly meeting of the full committee, though he wasn't able to say which one.
Clearly the union are bracing themselves for some dialogue over this issue at Thursday's meeting as another IRFU spokesperson responded immediately to the question by commenting: "The answer is they did have the power. Decision-making is empowered to the officers and the chief executive. There is no problem here, there is no issue."
As to why the full committee were not informed of the sub-committee's decision to remove Gatland, the spokesperson said: "They couldn't be told because strategicially it didn't fall that way. The whole process took three to four days and because of the nature of the thing it couldn't be made public."
Meanwhile, it was confirmed yesterday that Ireland will host Australia in next November's batch of Test matches. The world champions will play at Lansdowne Road on November 9th and due to the addition of World Cup qualifying matches in September, Ireland may play up to 13 Tests in 2002.
As well as the five matches in the Six Nations Championship, Ireland will undertake a three-match summer tour to New Zealand which will entail two Tests against the All Blacks.
A friendly against the Italians has been pencilled in for September 7th, ostensibly as a preparatory game before World Cup qualifiers on September 21st and 28th. This, however, depends on who Ireland are drawn against in those two games, one of which is expected to be away from home (possibly Russia in Moscow), and one at home.
After entertaining the Wallabies on November 9th, Ireland will host Fiji the following Saturday before concluding their itinerary for the calendar year with another chance to gain partial revenge on Argentina for the World Cup defeat in Lens.
The Ireland-Australia match will be the first of a three-Test tour by the Wallabies, who will also play England and Italy. This will be the first Test between the countries since the Wallabies won a World Cup pool match at Lansdowne Road 23-3 in October of last year.
By contrast, this will be the fifth year out of six that England will have hosted Australia at Twickenham in early winter, the exception being 1999 - the World Cup year. It will also be the eighth meeting between the countries in that timespan.
In the preceding five years England played Australia only once, in the 1995 World Cup quarter-finals in Cape Town.
Australia's World Cup-winning lock David Giffin undergoes surgery to reconstruct his shoulder this week and could conceivably miss the Wallabies' entire 2002 Test-match programme.
