Eddie O'Sullivan: Never Die Wondering
Hear the story of the rise of one of Irish rugby's great outsiders and, ultimately, his crushing fall.
As the longest-serving national coach in Irish rugby history, Eddie O'Sullivan produced a team that rose to third in the world rankings and laid down the standards for the team to fulfil its Grand Slam potential. Added to the three Triple Crowns he won in his six-year reign and the Corkman ought to enjoy legendary status in his homeland.
Yet, few figures in Irish sport divide opinion quite like O'Sullivan. Ireland's abject performance at the '07 World Cup in France prompted extraordinary levels of criticism and precipitated O'Sullivan's fall.
Here O'Sullivan talks candidly of the spectacular unravelling of confidence within probably the best Irish team in history; of the bizarre rumour mill that followed the Irish team through that World Cup; and takes us behind the scenes of a story that tossed an entire nation into mourning.
From his relationships with his successor as Irish coach, Declan Kidney, and indeed his predecessor, Warren Gatland, to his early struggle for recognition in the Irish game when the absence of a traditional rugby background militated against him, O'Sullivan pulls no punches in this revelatory story about far more than rugby.
Eddie O'Sullivan is a former PE teacher who took an unorthodox route up the coaching ladder. O'Sullivan's first success was to deliver a national under-15 basketball crown to a small convent in Co. Galway. Now 50, he lives in Moylough, Co. Galway with his wife, Noreen, and children, Katie and Barry.
Vincent Hogan is the Chief Sports Feature Writer of the Irish Independent. A former 'Sportswriter of the Year', his autobiography of Paul McGrath, Back from the Brink, won all three Irish Sports Book of the Year awards in 2006 and was voted 'Autobiography of the Year' at the British Sports Book awards.