Coaches rattle past media ambush

IRELAND V WALES:The media prodded for all they were worth but Eddie O'Sullivan and Warren Gatland frustrated their efforts to start a war of words

IT BOASTED the engineered subtlety of a primary-school playground spat. On opposite sides of the yard stood Eddie O'Sullivan and Warren Gatland with the media, faces a mask of mock solemnity, carrying barbed tales from one to the other in the hope of eliciting a reaction; preferably a verbal punch-up.

The cattle-prod diplomacy of the fourth estate has met with limited success in trying to reopen the wounds of a previously fractured relationship. The Ireland coach, O'Sullivan, has largely succeeded in avoiding any contentious remarks that could be misconstrued or tweaked to represent a slight, real or imagined.

His predecessor as Ireland coach, a man alongside whom he worked initially as assistant, has been a little more mischievous.

A voracious media pack have wolfed down the odd pointed remark, whose regurgitation could be equated to throwing a briquette on the embers of past contention. Gatland has delivered it with a smile and a glint in the eye. He is comfortable in his current environment, buoyed by a four-year contract and a brilliant start to the tournament.

Solomon himself might have found it difficult to tread the middle ground in the build-up to today's Six Nations Championship match in which Ireland host an unbeaten Wales. The rugby has received secondary billing, the glare of the spotlight trained permanently on the coaches. Their every word has been examined forensically, looking for spiteful DNA in each expression.

Yesterday in the warmth of the sunshine at Croke Park, the Ireland hooker Rory Best briefly flitted into the Wales coach's crosshairs, for what Gatland perceived as an injudicious comment on the merits of Wales's Six Nations performances to date.

Two hours later, the backdrop had changed from pitchside to the Jury's Hotel, where O'Sullivan conducted his final pre-match press conference and the media could not wait to apprise the Ireland coach of what had been said about his hooker.

O'Sullivan had been forewarned of Gatland's comments but chose to offer a different connotation of Best's comments and offered the following critique of Gatland's pinning up words in a team room as a motivational tool.

He explained: "I think it has probably been drummed up a bit. This is Test rugby and the whole point is to go out and test the opposition. Tomorrow is another test. It is a test for us and for Wales.

"That's the whole point; you go out and test each other. That's why it's called a test game. I think Rory was referring to that.

"You can sum it up as something more if you like. Rory knows the landscape tomorrow better than anyone."

The media won't be mollified and the next inquisitor wants to know whether O'Sullivan feels Gatland was wrong to do what he did.

"He can do that, I suppose," responds O'Sullivan. "That's what coaches do all the time. They use different angles to get guys thinking. In a professional game you have to remember that it might have been all great in the amateur days, (to employ that) ra-ra-ra, but I think we have moved beyond ra-ra-ra - a long way from it.

"We're talking about professional players who prepare meticulously to play a professional game, so throwaway comment by somebody a week before a game is not going to be the hinge on which you win a match.

"Wales, no more than Ireland, are a professional outfit. We have moved on from the amateur days when that kind of thing was based on the ra-ra-ra-ism, as I call it - rising the troops. That's a very dated view of how teams prepare to play rugby."

Undaunted, the media changed tack slightly, although retaining the stool-pigeon approach in informing Brian O'Driscoll of Gatland's suggestion (misquoted, apparently; and the Wales coach went out of his way to praise the player earlier) that he had lost a yard of pace.

The Irish captain smiled: "Who suggested that?" Up went the chorus: "Warren Gatland."

O'Driscoll continued: "He is entitled to his opinion. With 24 hours to go to the game you won't find me getting involved in a tit for tat. Each to their own; hopefully I will be able to do a bit of talking tomorrow."

In one final, desperate bid to break O'Sullivan's equanimity, he was requested to detail whether his tarnished relationship with Gatland had been a distraction in the run-up to today's match. It was a futile gambit that smacked of resignation: the media's.

The Ireland coach peered over the straight bat long enough to explain: "It hasn't really impinged on us at all. Most of the talk has come from your side of the table and it's great copy, I presume. You guys can really thrive on it. From our perspective we have really spent the week getting ready to play Wales.

"All that matters is what happens between 1.15pm and 3pm tomorrow across the street here. If you indulge yourself in stuff that's not going to impact on the performance you are wasting time and energy.

"You are better off spending time and energy on the things you can control. The only thing we can control at the moment is what we do . . . and how we prepare as a team. The whole week has been about that, like any other Test game.

"The game will happen tomorrow at 1.15, no matter what anyone says. All that matters is how we play.

"I have been totally focused on it all week. The players have been totally focused on it. It is the way you get ready for Test rugby. Nothing else matters. Talk is talk. Copy is copy. Sound bites are sound bites. What matters is what happens out on the pitch."

Just time for a half-hearted parting shot: Will you have a beer with Warren Gatland?

"Absolutely. I always have a beer with a coach after the game. When the game is over, the game is over and you shake hands. That's sport. You shake hands and have a beer and get on to the next battle with a different coach. I look forward to playing England and having a beer with Brian Ashton. It's a business. It's how it works."

The two coaches have been tied together in every sentence of the build-up to this match and it's difficult to escape the feeling they'll appreciate when the focus returns to the pitch at lunchtime today. For one though it will be a brief respite unless honours are shared.

The media will reload, recalibrate and in the aftermath of the game try and chivvy a genuine reaction: not just to the result.