THERE WAS a moment in Eddie O’Sullivan’s rugby life during the USA rugby team’s camp in Colorado this summer when the realisation that he was now in a very different place was hammered home.
In the build-up to the USA’s match against Georgia in June, Alec Parker, the Eagles lock, informed his head coach, O’Sullivan, that on their day off on the Wednesday in the week of the match, he had to travel back to Aspen to save the hay.
Not only was Parker making the trip to his farm but he was taking three members of the US squad with him.
Last week when Canada beat the USA on an aggregate score over two legs, three-quarters of O’Sullivan’s side were amateur players. It is the new reality for the former Irish coach, who needs a two-match, aggregate win over Uruguay to ensure a meeting with Ireland in the pool stages of the next World Cup.
As of July 13th, the USA had an IRB ranking of 18 to Uruguay’s 21.
“Yeah, one of our locks is a farmer in Aspen. He’d no hay cut,” says O’Sullivan stoically.
“We were in camp so on the down day we sent three players with him to knock his hay. We’ve a lot of amateurs and even the professional players in the squad are division one in England or Italy.”
The dates have not yet been fixed for the games with Uruguay but O’Sullivan is hoping they will take place during the November windows. Domestic reasons demand that his players go back to their universities, jobs and families after extended time away.
“The IRB are talking of playing the games in August but it’s not a runner with us,” says the coach.
“We’d fellas for seven weeks in camp and cannot ask them to take time off work again. We’re hoping for dates during the November windows so the guys can go and get their houses in order. Also our overseas guys like Todd Clever in the Golden Lions in South Africa can get back then.”
If the Eagles can win the series with Uruguay, it will not be the first time O’Sullivan has had to face Ireland in a World Cup as a coach with the USA. In 1999 he arrived to Lansdowne Road for a pool match as the US assistant coach.
“Yeah, if we can get through and qualify it would be the second time,” he says. “I suppose it has come the full circle. In ’99 we played in Lansdowne Road. But if we’d won last week we’d have been in a pool with New Zealand, France, Tonga and Japan. So there are no easy pools to get into in the World Cup.”
Most likely it will be skiing in Aspen in November. A good time for the US as O’Sullivan continues to play the scrambling game in a professional world.
Contrary to a report carried in yesterday's edition of The Irish Times, the Irish Lions squad members are likely to play some part in the Magners League prior to December 4th.
