O'Sullivan's tight grip on Ireland forces Ford to look to Saracens

Eddie O'Sullivan's uncompromising grip on coaching the national side may be the main reason why Ireland's defensive coach Mike Ford is looking to English side Saracens for a full time contract.

Yesterday, both the IRFU and Saracens remained tight lipped about Ford's move across the water. When contacted, a spokesman for Saracens told an Irish journalist: “Where did you here that? We haven't announced that.”

Ford simply went on the record as saying: “I'm still with Ireland at the moment. I'm discussing a few things with Eddie and looking forward to next year.

The former rugby league player has been a huge success with Ireland and is credited with bringing much needed to discipline to the side as well making them one of the meanest in terms of coughing up trys. He is now rated as one of the best in the business and you have to ask why he would want to take a step down to club rugby – he was already supplementing his income from the IRFU by working part time for Saracens.

Besides, if it was about money, then surely Saracens couldn't match what the IRFU could offer considering their biggest gate this season was just below 16,000. It's more likely he was unhappy in the Irish set up.

Spudnik understands that when the Englishman was brought into the coaching set up in January 2002, there were to be three stages to his work.

The first stage was to introduce his rugby league style defensive system to the players. Much to his credit, the players bought into his system despite, and much to Ford's surprise, never really spending much time in training on defence.

The second stage was to consolidate the system and the third was to meld the defensive and attacking systems.

It was this stage that O'Sullivan had a problem with and he felt Ford was crossing over onto his territory.

It's no secret that O'Sullivan likes to be in control – what head coach doesn't – and was unhappy that a high profile name like Declan Kidney was thrust upon him for so long as assistant and backs coach.

What isn't widely known is that Kidney was thrown into the coaching set up by the IRFU to keep a reign on O'Sullivan as he was considered to have too big and ego by some in the union.

After failing to achieve the Grand Slam and defend the Triple Crown O'Sullivan's conservative approach came in for much criticism. Following Kidney's departure O'Sullivan declined to fill the vacant position of backs coach. When Brian O'Brien steps down as manager, O'Sullivan intends to replace him with a PA type, thus leaving Ireland with no backs coach, no manager and now no defensive coach which is as close to the definition of crisis you can get.

To be fair to O'Sullivan the question has to be asked what business does Ford have wanting to get involved in the offence, when his brief was defence, but, the performance of the backs since the departure of Kidney was way below par. It was also Ford's defensive system that won the game against England and not O'Sullivan's offence.

Ireland can ill afford to lose someone of Ford's stature and with England and France away from home next year, O'Sullivan could find his preparations for the 2007 World Cup being hampered by questions and criticisms .over his ability.