Former Irish rugby coach Mick Doyle told the High Court today he was never asked to leave the Irish team’s dressing room prior to an international match against Scotland in Dublin in 1986.
He denied a suggestion that team captain Ciaran Fitzgerald had asked him to leave the dressing room before the game. He said that did not occur, he never left the room before the match and 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 surprise to me," apart, he said, from an article written by journalist David Walsh in 1992.
Mr Doyle said he and Ciaran Fitzgerald were friends for many years after that and were still friends, with no animosity whatever.
Mr Doyle - who was coach in 1984-1987 - was being cross-examined on the second day of his libel action against the Sunday Independentover 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 a native of Co Kerry, played 20 times for Ireland and was coach to the Irish team in the years 1984-1987.
He claims 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.
During his cross-examination, Mr Doyle agreed the article appeared 13 years after the events when he was coach. He said Mr Fanning had not been around when he was coaching and was writing about something that had happened in 1987 when he was not there.
He thought what Mr Fanning wrote about 1987 was total rubbish and untrue.
Mr Doyle said he was not saying 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 Mr Fanning was entitled to his opinion.
Mr Doyle said the 1980s were superb for the Irish team and said he took complete exception to the statement in the article that Mr Doyle "couldn’t manage to break even."
The hearing, before the President of the High Court, Mr Justice Finnegan, and a jury, continues tomorrow.