Let the spinning stop and O'Sullivan go

On Rugby:The final table tells no lies. Everybody in the Pool of Sharks played each other once and at the end of it Argentina are, deservedly, out in front, three points ahead of France, with Ireland - drowning like condemned men long before Sunday's sadly predictable end - well adrift a further six points back, four ahead of Georgia. The respective points differences underline this tellingly: Argentina (+110), France (+151), Ireland (-18) and Georgia (-61).

Ireland finished where they deserved to finish, a distant third-best or third-worst, depending on your point of view. No amount of spinning or abrogation of responsibilities can hide this. Ireland came up well short not just of expectations but performance levels and the fault lines start at the very top.

One felt tremendous sympathy for the beaten players on Sunday as they looked on stunned while the Pumas partied on the pitch, and even more so when Brian O'Driscoll sought to carry the can afterwards on behalf of them for underperforming after another Herculean effort by him.

At least somebody was prepared to take responsibility. But the players have been, to a large degree, symptomatic of these manifold failings, not the root cause of them.

We were told this was going to be the best-prepared Irish squad to go to a World Cup, a hollow claim that reminds one of Clive Woodward's similar boast before the last Lions debacle. It certainly was the most expensively prepared and assembled Irish squad in history, but that's different.

Let's start with the physical conditioning, fitness and training of this squad. Despite four years of 10-week pre-seasons, and two more trips to Spala, Irish players were consistently knocked back in the collisions, even by the Georgians. In all their games, they made strong, adrenaline-fuelled starts they could not sustain. That their most sustained effort physically - and this is entirely relevant to the three preceding efforts - came last Sunday after their most relaxed and restful week may have been no coincidence, though they still failed to score in the last 33 minutes.

Then the falling off physically, the lapses in concentration and the errors came more into play. Signs of irritation on the field, coupled with grim countenances off it, may not entirely have been down to disappointment with results. Experts in this field say these and more are all examples and evidence of what they call overtraining syndrome. Maybe the truth of this, like constant rumours of disharmony in the camp, will come out in the wash.

So much else went wrong, however, it's hard to know where to start. The decision to grant Eddie O'Sullivan a four-year extension - made smugly in the glow of a €6-million profit that came courtesy of the GAA's benevolence - further strengthened his enormous power; this being the third time the IRFU had permitted him a longer contract than those he was working with.

One cannot blame O'Sullivan for signing that extension. He is married with kids; in a ruthless profession it afforded him financial security that is rare in the global game. But that was a failure of management, and so was everything that has gone wrong since, for which O'Sullivan has to be mainly culpable. When performances didn't reach expectations, O'Sullivan and co clearly had no strategy in mind except to plough on with the same team. Bad management. Bad planning.

One player told me that when O'Sullivan announced his new contract extension to the squad in the Killiney hotel, the reaction was one of silence. Á la four years ago, most of the players, save for the powerful few on long contracts such as O'Driscoll, Paul O'Connell and Ronan O'Gara, are centrally contracted and fearful of the coach and the union.

The appalling man-management of the squad underlined this and was exemplified by the splitting up of the 45 players in Spala in pre-season, with the 15 "untouchables" in one group, the next 15 in another, and the 15 fringe members in the last. One player reported to have said something slightly out of line was apparently awoken from his slumbers at midnight and asked to explain himself. This is control freakery gone bananas.

The treatment of Geordan Murphy seemed very unfair and was a failure of coaching as well as man management. If O'Sullivan remains in situ, Murphy will surely be lost for good.

One player told me that whereas a year ago they were allowed play what they saw in front of them, now they had become too programmed. In his utter failure to use his bench or in the concept of long-term or short-term squad development - every other country understood the concept but Ireland used only 19 players in four starting line-ups - O'Sullivan actually looks out of date and out of his depth in World Cup company.

These condemnations are not the thoughts of just one person. The Irish skills - offloading, support play, lines of running, clearing out - are, according to one long-standing coach of high repute, "among the worst of the 20 countries in this World Cup". Who would argue?

But the appointment of Brian McLaughlin as skills coach was entirely on O'Sullivan's recommendation. So too the tactics, whatever they were. Talk of "high-risk" rugby - there were 32 kicks against Georgia and only a dozen attempted offloads, of which half went to ground or were knocked on - is a nonsense.

The big three and Tonga, Wales, Argentina, France and others offload and support in depth, in numbers and at pace inestimably better than Ireland, who have clearly become stale and gone backwards.

The damage to this group of players can only be guessed at. Most will not be around for the next World Cup, or won't be at their prime any more. Yet the squad was backboned by Munster European Cup heroes - an achievement way above a Triple Crown - and a golden generation of Leinster backs. When will we ever see their likes again?

Thomas Castaignède wrote in the Guardian last week that O'Sullivan has to be regarded as the worst-performing head coach in the tournament. Brian Moore wrote in the Daily Telegraph yesterday that Ireland's offensive running game was "typical of the cack-handedness that has characterised Ireland's woeful campaign". It goes on. Asked to pick one area where Ireland performed up to par on Sunday, O'Sullivan could only name the scrum.

This was the longest period this head coach and back-up staff have had with the leading Irish players in four years. None of the players have played with their provinces since early last May. The players have been, to a large degree, symptomatic of these manifold failings, not the root cause of them.

O'Sullivan is on the record as saying he wants to have the contracts of all the back-up staff renewed. Any U-turn on that would seem highly disingenuous. Likewise, changes in playing personnel - though inevitable anyway - will clearly not be sufficient to inject the required freshness, new thinking and new approach the current generation of Irish players desperately need.

This World Cup has been an unmitigated failure. If O'Sullivan is even retained into the next Six Nations, the only people buying into the reasons for this failure are the IRFU king-makers.

O'Sullivan himself brought a new dimension into the Irish back play when first bought on board in 2000 as assistant coach. He has had many highs along the way, and a good few lows, but in his task of "bringing Ireland on to the next level", judged by the litmus test that matters most, he and those around him have not delivered.

He had a three-year build-up to the last World Cup, when singularly failing to use a squad system, and has repeated those errors and more after a four-year run at the latest one with even worse results. In that time he has had every wish granted - too much so.

Also, three prominent members of the backroom team have departed in the last four years - Declan Kidney, Mike Ford and Brian O'Brien - to the point where someone from the IRFU's administrative department was appointed manager.

How many fans have heard of current team manager Ger Carmody.

He was granted far too much power, for which the king-makers are responsible, and somewhere along the line O'Sullivan became far too limited in approach.

Changes in back-up staff, changes in playing personnel or even appointing a proper manager - to deal with issues such as the rumours about O'Gara's personal life and the wellbeing of all the players - would be closing the stable door long after the horse has bolted.

The problems in Irish rugby - a decaying club game, an insufficient conveyor belt of young talent, a stagnant coaching structure caused in part by the ill-advised extension to O'Sullivan's contract, and the influence of IRFU personnel on the Ireland team - go way deeper than the identity of Ireland's head coach.

But it is blindingly clear to virtually every single former player, coach and supporter this writer has spoken to that Irish rugby needs a fresh and vibrant person - preferably one to whom certain king-makers do not feel they can snuggle up in order to influence selection - to take Ireland on to the 2011 World Cup.

The IRFU's chief executive, Philip Browne, talked of dealing in four-year cycles when rushing to announce O'Sullivan's extension a month before this World Cup, even though the decision was a contradiction of that statement.

It's unpleasant asking for anyone to lose his job, but if building in four-year cycles is not just to be a meaningless, empty phrase, the new cycle needs to start now.