The former Ireland rugby coach, Mr Mick Doyle, told the High Court yesterday that he was never asked to leave the Irish team's dressing room before an international match against Scotland in Dublin in 1986.
He denied a suggestion that team captain, Ciarán Fitzgerald, had asked him to leave the dressing room before the game. He said that did not occur, he never left the dressing room before the match, and he was the last to leave it for that game.
If another player, Des Fitzgerald, had said he had been asked to leave the room and he left it, "that's a suprise to me", apart, he said, from an article written by journalist David Walsh in 1992.
Mr Doyle said he and Ciarán Fitzgerald were friends for many years after that and were still friends, with no animosity whatever.
Mr Doyle, who was Ireland coach from 1984 to 1987, was being cross-examined on the second day of his libel action against the Sunday Independent over an article written by rugby journalist Brendan Fanning and published on February 13th, 2000.
Among other matters, the article stated: "If you want to look at track records, then Mick Doyle, who was Ireland's most successful coach of that period, couldn't manage to break even. And within two seasons of winning a Triple Crown in 1985, he had become ostracised by the decision-making core among the players. Nobody was making a realistic case for him to stay."
Mr Doyle (61), of Sherlockstown Lodge, Sallins, Co Kildare, and originally from Co Kerry, played 20 times for Ireland before holding the position of coach to the team.
He claims that the article meant he was banished and excluded by members of the Irish team during the course of his tenure as coach and that Irish internationals whom he coached did not wish to have any involvement with him.
The defence pleads that the words complained of were true in substance and were fair comment on a matter of public interest.
Cross-examined by Mr Eoin McCullough SC, for the defence, Mr Doyle said there was no decision-making corps in the Irish team. It was unfair to say that he grew apart from the team going into 1986. He did not give the impression that the players were playing for him and not for their country, their families and themselves.
During his cross-examination, Mr Doyle agreed that the article appeared 13 years after the events when he was coach. He agreed that Mr Fanning had not been around when he [Mr Doyle] was coaching and that he had been writing about something which had occurred in 1987, when he was not present. He thought what Mr Fanning wrote about 1987 was "total rubbish" and was untrue.
Mr Doyle said he was not saying that he himself should be thought of as a "great guy" and that Mr Fanning was a "baddie", but Mr Fanning was not there in 1987 and did not have first-hand information about that time.
He agreed that the background to the article was a heavy defeat of Ireland by England shortly beforehand and said that Mr Fanning was entitled to his opinion.
Mr Doyle said that the 1980s had been superb for the Irish team. He took "complete exception" to the statement in the article that he [Mr Doyle] "couldn't manage to break even".
The hearing, before the President of the High Court, Mr Justice Finnegan, and a jury, continues today.