By Mark Jones
DUBLIN — If it came like a bolt from the blue, it still wasn’t quite the shock story it seemed. When Warren Gatland was fired as Ireland rugby coach last Wednesday, the news emerged at a time when the national team was flying higher than at any time in the last 15 years. But then, despite promising results, several influential figures in the IRFU have had serious doubts about their coach for some time.
Effectively, those IRFU officers believed that Gatland should have gotten his marching orders in 1999 after a disastrous showing at the World Cup, and that Ireland’s improved performances in the last two seasons coincided with the arrival of Eddie O’Sullivan as assistant coach.
Gatland had been interviewed by a six-man subcommittee on Monday, Nov. 26. Two days later, he was summoned to another meeting, this one with the sub-committee’s chairman, Eddie Coleman, and the union’s chief executive, Philip Browne, at the Berkely Court Hotel. It took just eight minutes and Gatland was out of a job.
A statement attributed to Browne praised Gatland “significant contribution” but added that the union had made a “major investment . . . (in) our team, so that it consistently competes at the highest levels of world rugby. Following on-going and detailed reviews, it was agreed that it is in the best interests of all concerned to end the contract with immediate effect.”
For his part, Gatland was quoted as saying: “I want to thank the players and wish them all the best for the future. I look forward to fulfilling a new challenge in rugby.”
Never miss an issue of The Irish Echo
Subscribe to one of our great value packages.
When national coaches were dismissed in previous years, the IRFU was left with an embarrassing vacuum, whereas this time O’Sullivan was ready and waiting to take the job, so Gatland’s contract, which was due to run until next April, was terminated.
O’Sullivan, who has coached Connacht, London Irish, Buccaneers and the USA Eagles in past incarnations, now fulfills his ambition, and the IRFU has decreed that the current Munster coach, Declan Kidney, will be O’Sullivan’s assistant, with both men contracted until 2004.
The reaction to Gatland’s dismissal has varied from incredulity on behalf of several unnamed players — “Unbelievable, I can’t fathom it,” said one. “That’s disgusting, that’s absolutely disgusting; he’s been royally shafted,” said another — to praise for the ruthless nature of the decision. In another era, he might have survived until the next World Cup in 2003, but on this occasion the IRFU lost patience with the coach who had been in charge of more matches, 38, than anyone before him. But why did he get the chop?
There were four main events that the IRFU focused on in terminating the three-and-a-half-year relationship. First, there was the residual mistrust following the last World Cup, two years ago, when Ireland performed abysmally, bowing out tamely to Argentina in the last 16. A couple of months later, with his job on the line, Gatland watched helplessly as England scored 50 points in a Six Nations massacre at Twickenham.
Then there was another embarrassing loss to Scotland in September, and, finally, just before that humiliation, Gatland had aired his views about wanting an improved contract in public. That sort of megaphone negotiating is anathema to the IRFU and was probably the last straw.
At that time, Gatland was told his position would be reviewed in November, at the end of the Six Nations and after the test match against New Zealand. In the meantime, the team had produced a tactically perfect performance to beat England, and had played reasonably well against New Zealand, so the coach’s stock had seemingly risen.
But his critics were still putting the team’s progress down to O’Sullivan’s influence, and it is probable that even before contract talks took place last week, the decision to sack Gatland had been made. He would be paid off, and O’Sullivan would take his place.
The IRFU was saying nothing, only mopping up the blood on the plush carpets of Dublin’s Berkeley Court. However, they believe that O’Sullivan is a more organized and more astute coach than Gatland, and that he has the ability to guide the national team toward the next World Cup.