Róisín Ingle looks back on the colourful career of Mick Doyle and recalls his own accounts of his exploits on and off the rugby pitch
Less than 10 years ago former Ireland rugby coach Mick Doyle might have toasted his settlement in the High Court with a bottle of wine, several pints of Guinness, and a few whiskeys. Back then Mick Doyle's lifestyle could have seen him waking up this morning with an almighty hangover.
He has admitted that over-eating and heavy drinking were part of his life as he travelled the world on business, having left rugby and then rugby journalism behind.
One summer morning in the mid-90s he got up with a blinding headache that wouldn't go away. Members of his family were told by doctors to "say goodbye to Mick" but he recovered after surgery for a brain haemorrhage.
He wrote a book, Zero Point One Six, about learning to live again. The title came from the tiny percentage of people who recover from such an illness. "I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to be alive . . . every day keeps me happier," the 61-year old veterinary surgeon said outside the High Court yesterday.
Mr Doyle, who also survived a major heart attack in 1987, has lived enough lives to validate the tomcat-like image of himself he created in his autobiography Doyler.
In it, he proudly, and not a little crudely, detailed his sexual exploits both in and out of the marital bed. And yesterday another part of his keenly-guarded reputation - that of one-time hero of Irish rugby, beloved of players and selectors alike - was vindicated.
Mr Doyle emerged from the court a rumoured €75,000 richer, delighted at the prospect of a promised apology from the Sunday Independent, which had alleged he had been ostracised by the decision-making core of players on the Irish team by the end of his tenure as coach.
The newspaper may once have employed him as an outspoken rugby writer, but Doyler was determined to have the assertion in the article repudiated. He has said he was "incensed and distressed" by the comment; it was the apology he sought - not the money.
During his career as a rugby commentator, he never held back when criticising the Irish team, and at one point was vilified by the rugby world in the same way soccer fans turned on Eamon Dunphy during the World Cup. "When are Ireland going to get up off their arses?" was a typical Doyle comment.
In 1992 he wrote about the "absolutely abysmal performances" of players such as then Ireland captain Philip Matthews. "Let me put it to you quite simply," he wrote. "The selectors are a bunch of incompetents, the coach couldn't give directions to the team hotel and the captain is finished."
Known as a gravelly-voiced, straight-talking raconteur, his most famous saying while at the top of Irish rugby was "give it a lash".
"He is a sweetheart, an opera singer bursting out of a rugby shirt," according to rugby commentator Tom McGurk. "He was born to sing, he has an infectious enthusiasm for life, and for rugby. He infected the Ireland team in the mid-80s with that enthusiasm."
Admirers credit him with being among the first Irish sporting coaches to recognise the importance of self-belief and self-image in the fortunes of a team. It was this approach, placing more importance on spontaneity than any system, which many believe played a vital part in leading Ireland to the 1985 Triple Crown.
Away from the rugby pitch, he is a leading expert in poultry disease.
A part of the Doyler legend is the unorthodox interview procedure that led to him being accepted to study at Cambridge University. The myth goes that the young Doyle walked into the interview room and was thrown a rugby ball which he duly caught.
"You're in," the impressed academic is reported to have exclaimed.
In his autobiography, he described himself as Michael G Doyle, veterinarian, businessman, father, lover, ex-husband, friend and coach to the Irish rugby football team.
The book was peppered with descriptions of his sex life ranging from "closet nookey" to "horizontal jogging" and the "orgasmic Richter scale". He wrote about the breakdown of his first marriage and his subsequent remarriage to Mandy, who he credited as being his "hyacinth bouquet" outside the Four Courts yesterday.
It was Gaelic sports, not rugby, that first caught his imagination as a schoolboy. His interest in the sport that would make him a household name in Ireland and in many parts of the rugby-playing world developed later while he was attending Newbridge College in Co Kildare.
At home, his father had conducted rugby quizzes and as a teenager the young Doyle became a Leinster schools flanker.
He studied to become a vet in UCD.He was capped 20 times for Ireland during the 1960s - including during one controversial trip to South Africa in 1967 - before becoming one of the most famous of all Irish coaches by leading the team to a Triple Crown.
He still comments on rugby for RTÉ occasionally.
He has a business in Sallins, Co Kildare, but keeps close ties to his native Kerry.
"I've never failed in anything I have set out to do," he has said in the past.
He can now add victory in this libel case against his former employers to his list of achievements.