Never Die Wondering

In over a century of international rugby, Ireland won six Triple Crowns. With Eddie O'Sullivan at the helm, they won three in four years. The Corkman is, thus, the most successful national coach in Irish rugby history, a fact that - theoretically - ought to confer legendary status upon him in his homeland. But the reality has been rather different for O'Sullivan. Few figures in Irish sport divide opinion quite like the man who coached the so-called 'golden generation' of Irish rugby through seven Six Nations Championships. Ireland's abject performance at the '07 World Cup in France prompted extraordinary levels of criticism and O'Sullivan took the brunt of it. His team had gone to the tournament considered among the favourites for the title after a storming Six Nations tournament in which they slaughtered England by thirty points on an emotion-charged day at Croke Park. Yet Ireland failed to get out of the so-called 'Group of Death' in France and that failure essentially precipitated O'Sullivan's fall. Here, for the first time, he talks of the spectacular unravelling of confidence within probably the best Irish team in history and the vitriol it decanted. Of the bizarre rumour mill that followed the Irish team through that World Cup tournament and tossed an entire nation into mourning. O'Sullivan writes with surprising candour of strained relationships with his successor as Irish coach, Declan Kidney, and indeed his predecessor as Irish supremo, Wales and Lions coach, Warren Gatland. He reveals how, twice in his career, he baled out controversial Irish TV pundit George Hook, a man who would become his most acerbic critic in later years. O'Sullivan pulls no punches on the people he rates in rugby and the people he doesn't in a rugby autobiography like no other.