SEVERAL talking points have emerged following the resignation of Murray Kidd as Ireland coach last week. Firstly, there is the issue of the role of the team coach as distinct from that of the manager. Secondly, the issue of team selection has become a matter for debate. Indeed, it is the subject of ongoing debate in the game.

These issues are not, however, by any means the full reasons behind Kidd's departure, nor are they the reasons why he did not succeed as Ireland coach. Those issues are not new, but the departure of the coach less than a fortnight before the start of the International Championship gives added impetus to what is a contentious subject.

I have in the past said that the management structure of the Ireland side is wrong and is imbalanced. The manager should be in charge of administration, the coach should have sole responsibility for team affairs. There should not be five selectors; the manager and coach should have advisers selected by themselves.

Some very important details are getting lost in the ongoing debate about Kidd's departure. He was appointed in October 1995 in the immediate aftermath of the game going professional. The call for Ireland to have a professional coach was loud from some quarters, some saw it as the only way forward.

I must say I find some of the comments that Brian Ashton's appointment is an insult to Irish coaches ring rather hollow. If Ashton's appointment can be thus interpreted, then so should Kidd's appointment have been.

In comparing the past with the current situation, there is a fundamental and very important difference. Prior to Kidd's appointment, the position of Ireland coach was honorary. The coach was attached to the IRFU and when also a selector, which was not always the case, a member of an IRFU sub committee. Under the new order the coach is an employee of the union. That is a very important consideration and a vital change in the job specification.

However crude or cruel, a hire and fire policy is now the reality. It is part of the professionalism that rugby has embraced. You sign the contract take the money and take the risks. Players will feel the cold air, too, in the near future. That was pointed out to them by last season's IRFU president Syd Millar in August 1995.

He and Tom Kiernan, Ireland's representatives on the International Board, have recently been accused by one Irish player of being unable to accept the reality of professionalism. They understood its realities and implications only too well. Professionalism saw off the amateur ethic, but imposed its own obligations.

It is perhaps ironic that Kidd, a vociferous advocate of professionalism, should now find himself what might be termed Ireland's first casualty of the new era. Irony, too, in the fact that the man who is replacing him, Brian Ashton, should have found himself unable to continue as Bath chief coach just 190 days after he had turned professional by resigning as a teacher and taking a full time post with Bath. Rugby had better get used to happenings of this nature. It made a hasty and very ill conceived move from being a sport to being a business.

Some find it difficult to separate Kidd's departure and the manner and method of it from the fact that he was a paid official. It is necessary in the interest of objectivity to separate the two. Of course, there is a human element and understandably there will be sympathy for the fact that he lost his job. There is also a practical aspect. The circumstances of his departure were far from ideal, but Ireland's performances and results could scarcely have been ignored. Should nothing have been done to try and arrest the trend of recurring defeat?

Kidd took the job last season and again this season knowing the precise parameters within which he had to work. He had to stand or fall on that. The contract he signed was specific in relation to the termination clause. He knew and accepted the clauses that were in that contract. He was well aware of the consequences if Ireland did not get reasonable results or at least reasonable performances - he basically got neither.

It is a great pity that some additional clauses were not put into some of the players contracts as well. There was nothing covert, underhand or deceitful in the dealings the IRFU had with Kidd and his representatives in relation to the contract he signed. It was fundamentally a business arrangement. If the IRFU did not deliver their part of the deal, then I am sure they would have had to pay the penalty.

I would be less than honest were I to say that I thought he was making a good job of coaching Ireland. I did not doubt his sincerity or his honesty of purpose, but I did believe that in many respects he had got the wrong perspective in relation to many aspects of the game in this country.

The ability to relate to situations and people - and I do not just mean the Ireland squad players - is very important and preconceived ideas can be hazardous, especially when they were formed in a very different situation and background. I believe that his mind was too closed to vital aspects of the game in this country. That was a major drawback.

The fact that he is not Irish is in itself immaterial, as is the fact that he is a New Zealander. He comes from a great rugby nation and was deeply involved in the game there. I believe one of his major problems was his inability to separate certain aspects of New Zealand and Irish rugby and to work within the Irish rugby scene at international level in the specific elements that relate to it and from which it differs fundamentally in so many respects from New Zealand. I discussed with him in private some of the views he held about elements of the game here, in particular the schools and under 21 situations, and I also raised those and a few other issues in public. I found his response unsatisfactory, his perception flawed.

However good his record at club level - and it is extremely good - he needed guidance in some vital matters in relation to the game here, particularly in relation to the provincial scene. His relationship with the provincial coaches once he stepped on to the international stage was not what it might have been. He either did not get their advice or he did not heed it.

In addition, coaching at club level in a close environment and working with the same pool of players several times a week is very different to doing the job at national and representative levels. He found that out when he went back to New Zealand to coach King Country, the provincial side for which he had played with distinction. His tenure there was even more short lived than his stay with Ireland.

The manner of his departure is another issue and there has been some ill informed comment about that, too. The fact that he is no longer Ireland coach is I believe correct. He has much to contribute as a club coach and I hope and believe he will get the opportunity in the near future to prove it. I am sure he will.