Eddie O'Sullivan: Never Die Wondering: The Autobiography - Tapa dura

As the longest-serving national coach in Irish rugby history, Eddie O'Sullivan produced a team that rose to third in the world rankings and laid down the standards for the team to fulfil its Grand Slam potential. Added to the three Triple Crowns he won in his six-year reign and the Corkman ought to enjoy legendary status in his homeland.

But the reality has been rather different for O'Sullivan. In fact, 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. Indeed, O'Sullivan was thought at the time to be a likely Lions coach for the '09 tour to South Africa. Yet, Ireland failed to get out of the so-called 'Group of Death' and that failure 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. He talks candidly of the bizarre rumour mill that followed the Irish team through that World Cup tournament and takes us behind the scenes of a story that tossed an entire nation into mourning.

O'Sullivan writes with surprising candour about his relationships with his successor as Irish coach, Declan Kidney, and indeed his predecessor, Warren Gatland. He describes his early struggle for recognition in the Irish game when the absence of a traditional rugby background militated against him.

His autobiography flies in the face of so many stubborn preconceptions. O'Sullivan pulls no punches on the people he rates in rugby and the people he doesn't. Hear the story of the rise of one of Irish rugby's great outsiders and, ultimately, his crushing fall.

Eddie O'Sullivan is a former PE teacher who took an unorthodox route up the coaching ladder. O'Sullivan's first success was to deliver a national under-15 basketball crown to a small convent in Co. Galway. Now 50, he lives in Moylough, Co. Galway with his wife, Noreen, and children, Katie and Barry.

Vincent Hogan is the Chief Sports Feature Writer of the Irish Independent. A former 'Sportswriter of the Year', his autobiography of Paul McGrath, Back from the Brink, won all three Irish Sports Book of the Year awards in 2006 and was voted 'Autobiography of the Year' at the British Sports Book awards.