Doyle, Mick (Michael Gerard)

by Terry Clavin

Doyle, Mick (Michael Gerard) (1940–2004), rugby player and coach, was born 13 October 1940 in his maternal grandparents' house at Currow, Farranfore, Co. Kerry, the elder of two sons of Michael Doyle, a general merchant, publican and poultry farmer, of Castleisland, Co. Kerry, and his wife Nell (née Dennehy). Unlike his younger brother Tom, who was raised by his parents in Castleisland, he spent his childhood in the care of his Dennehy grandparents in the nearby parish of Currow, where he attended the local national school. He claimed never to have seen a rugby ball until, aged 12, he entered Newbridge College, a renowned rugby academy, in Co. Kildare. Finding that the handling and kicking skills acquired from playing Gaelic football transferred readily to rugby, he captained the school team in the Leinster Senior Cup and played in a variety of positions, but mainly as a wing forward or as a centre.

Playing career In 1958 he entered UCD, eventually deciding to study as a vet. From 1960 he played for the UCD college team as open‑side flanker, which became his settled position. UCD won successive Leinster Senior Cups (1963 and 1964) by playing stylish, innovative and attacking rugby, which complemented Doyle's strengths, built around speed, ball‑playing flair, anticipation and expert tackling. He performed with a brio that reflected his extroverted personality. In his element in open and loose play, owing to his lack of height and weight, he was less effective in scrums and line‑outs.

He played a few games for the Munster inter‑provincial team in the early 1960s but, understanding that further opportunities would be limited, declared for Leinster, becoming a regular from 1963. In January 1965 he won his first cap for Ireland against France in Dublin and described that encounter's early stages as 'the most concerted period of mayhem that I have ever witnessed or contributed to' (Doyler, 30). He scored Ireland's try in a 3–3 draw. In 1965–8 he won twenty caps for Ireland, latterly as pack leader, distinguishing himself in a formidable and enterprising back row. Highlights of his international career included participating in the triumphant 1967 tour of Australia, scoring the winning try against Wales in 1968 and occupying with his brother Tom the two wing‑forward berths for Ireland in three internationals.

Having qualified as a vet in 1964, he pursued post‑graduate studies at Christ's College, Cambridge (1965–6), and Edinburgh University (1966–7), playing rugby for Cambridge University (participating in a drawn Varsity match with Oxford) and Edinburgh Wanderers. In 1967 he returned to Ireland to pursue his club career with Blackrock College and to take over his father's poultry breeding business based in Kill, Co. Kildare, his postgraduate research having been in poultry pathology. In 1966 he married Lynne Thompson of Somerset, whom he had met while on a rugby tour in England in 1963. Their marriage produced one son and two daughters. The family settled in Co. Kildare where Doyle lived at various addresses for virtually the rest of his life.

In 1968 he was selected for the British and Irish Lions on their tour of South Africa. He played in eleven matches including the first Test match but was dropped for the remaining three tests as it was held that his relatively slight frame made him a liability against a physically imposing South Africa pack; his tour was also disrupted by injury. He found consolation in an intense affair with a South African woman and as a leading member of the 'Wreckers', a portion of the 1968 Lions notorious for their rowdiness. While he revelled in such camaraderie (becoming drunk for the first time), the tour contributed to his belief that he had failed to fulfil his potential. He became disenchanted with rugby, which he saw, following the emergence of powerful rugby coaches and the attendant strategising, as increasingly characterised by a negativity that stifled creative players and that prized brawn over skill.

In late 1968 he retired prematurely from rugby to concentrate on his career and on raising a family. Following the demise of his poultry business in 1971, he established a veterinary practice, acting as consultant to the poultry industry and building a reputation as an authority on poultry health. He was also a founding partner in several companies that developed and marketed various animal health products. Previously a teetotaller, he became a heavy drinker; his unhealthy lifestyle was aggravated by a punishing work schedule which required him to drive hundreds of miles a week to meet farmers' groups. From being a fresh‑faced and lean‑bodied young man, he acquired a rotund physique as well as a mustachioed, ruddy‑cheeked and somewhat ravaged complexion, complementing his increasingly rakish persona. He resumed playing in 1973 for Blackrock, captaining the club to victory in the 1974 Leinster Senior League, and also coached the Blackrock and Naas teams in the mid 1970s. He later admitted that his initial forays into coaching were not successful.

Leinster and Ireland coach His appointment as coach of the Leinster inter‑provincial team in 1979 (having previously served as a Leinster sub‑selector) came as a surprise and met with objections that he lacked any coaching qualifications. He acknowledged his lack of technical expertise but argued that, as the fundamentals of the game were imparted at club level, the goal of a provincial coach was to provide motivation. This he achieved by eschewing the trend, resented by the players, of basing training sessions around gruelling physical exercises and detailed tactical instructions. Instead he encouraged his charges to develop their own stratagems, which he would help to execute in alarmingly intense but enjoyable practice sessions and matches. His jocose manner and treatment of the players as peers rather than as subordinates instilled a strong sense of team spirit. This assertively irreverent attitude was not to the liking of the IRFU establishment, but he had an influential ally (and close friend) in its inner sanctum in Michael Cuddy, the livestock exporter and racehorse owner.

Leinster had been underachieving because the players identified more with their clubs, but Doyle transformed the province into a united and successful unit. During his five seasons in charge (1979–84) Leinster won the inter‑provincial championship four times and shared it on the other occasion. More impressive still were victories against club sides from Scotland, Wales, Italy and Romania, and over the Italian and Romanian national teams.

In 1983 he was considered for the Ireland coaching position, but lost out to one of Ireland's most decorated former players, Willie John McBride. Customarily a coach served for three years but McBride was replaced by Doyle after a disastrous first season. Both the 1983 and 1984 Irish coach 'elections' were characterised by divisive subterranean intrigues with Cuddy playing a prominent role. Most observers accepted that Doyle was the superior candidate, but were disturbed by the ruthless tactics employed to secure McBride's removal.

The odium thus incurred and the breakup of the 1982 Triple Crown team left Doyle in an invidious position. He upped the ante yet further by introducing five uncapped players and by proclaiming his intention to play open rugby. Such thinking conflicted with the established orthodoxy, based around a powerful but lumbering pack, astute tactical kicking and stolid tackle‑oriented backs. As Leinster coach he had preached similarly, and the players had often irritated him by relying pragmatically on the strengths of their forwards and half‑backs. For Doyle the weakness of Ireland's forwards was a disguised blessing as the only viable strategy was to move the ball speedily.

This necessitated the reconstruction of an ageing pack, principally by the creation of a new and dynamic back row comprising Philip Matthews, Nigel Carr and Brian Spillane. Their mobility enabled them to support the backs in open play and to compensate for the frailties of Ireland's tight forwards by scavenging for possession in the loose. Secondly, a particular sort of out‑half was required. The obvious candidate was Tony Ward who, though an outstanding tactical kicker, was viewed (rather unjustly) as either unwilling or unable to link effectively with the backline. Moreover, Ward's celebrity status was regarded with distaste within the IRFU and exemplified what Doyle called the 'one‑man band' mentality, which placed the onus solely on the out‑half to win the match.

Doyle and the selectors instead chose Paul Dean, who had played much of his adult career as a centre, but excelled at creating space for the backs alongside him and, due to the inaccuracy of his kicking, could be relied on to run the ball continuously. The selections of Dean and of Michael Bradley at scrum‑half were controversial but Doyle skilfully maintained his half-backs' self‑confidence. One way of taking the pressure off the team was to become the focus of media attention, a goal he achieved through his quotable and entertaining press conferences. His craving for the limelight partly explains his ungraciousness towards Ward whose cause was championed by some journalists.

While critics pointed out that Ward's omission left Ireland without a recognised place‑kicker, Doyle saw this deficiency as an encouragement to score tries rather than rely on penalties. This corresponded with his rugby philosophy, which held that the priority was not to win but to perform as a fifteen‑man team in a spontaneous, carefree and risk‑taking fashion – encapsulated by his catchphrase 'give it a lash'. Effective player empowerment required strong leadership on the pitch and the shrewdest of his decisions was to restore Ciaran Fitzgerald both to the team and to the captaincy. Believing that his role was to facilitate Fitzgerald, who did most of the talking and organising during training sessions, Doyle acted more as a psychologist to the players than as a coach. The bluff, verbose exterior (which led the superficially acquainted to dismiss him as an unreconstructed rugby boor) concealed a keen intellect and a discerning judge of human nature.

Triple Crown and after In 1985 Ireland exceeded even Doyle's expectations, winning both the Triple Crown and the Five Nations Championship by beating Scotland, Wales and England, and by drawing with France. Through a mixture of judgement and luck, the pieces in the new‑look Ireland team fell into place while Michael Kiernan proved surprisingly reliable in the place‑kicking role that was thrust upon him. Opposing teams reacted to Doyle's commitment to play running rugby with a mixture of incredulity and glee and were taken unawares when Ireland proceeded to do so, and with some success. Lacking a secure platform from set pieces, Ireland relied on the back row forwards to scramble, disrupt and turn over the ball before launching a running counter‑attack off second‑phase possession.

The opening encounter against Scotland was a compelling affair in which Irish adventure was rewarded late in the game with an audacious winning try that was the culmination of a move involving the entire three‑quarters line. More remarkable still was the Wales match in which Ireland was dominated in the scrums and line‑outs, yet fashioned an unlikely 21–9 triumph (the first in Cardiff since 1967) through inspired back play feeding off the marauding back row. The games against France and England were dour affairs, and the downpour that accompanied the England match, making ball handling problematic, served warning that the local climate militated against running rugby on a regular basis.

In recognition of his achievements, Doyle was appointed to coach the British and Irish Lions in a planned 1986 tour of South Africa, which, to his chagrin, was cancelled following anti‑apartheid protests. (While repelled by the institutionalised racism he had witnessed in South Africa in 1968, he pointed out that he had been similarly disturbed by the Ceausescu regime, but had toured Romania with Leinster in 1980 without attracting any controversy.) In Ireland he parlayed his fame on the after‑dinner and business seminar circuits, sprinkling his speeches liberally with salty, obscenity‑riddled rugby anecdotes, which were as likely to leave listeners squirming in their seats as laughing appreciatively. Doyle had become more interested in cultivating his own fame than in developing the team. Refusing to acknowledge Ireland's weakness at set pieces, he declared that they were merely a means of restarting the game. This complacency spread to the team, which noted his unconcern at Ireland's mediocre performances in a tour of Japan and a friendly with Fiji in late 1985.

As a result, Ireland lost all their matches in the 1986 Five Nations Championship as opponents systematically and successfully targeted their scrums and line‑outs, starving the dynamic Irish backline of possession. Particularly embarrassing was the 20–25 loss to England where Ireland conceded two push-over tries and also a penalty try in lieu of a push-over try. Doyle was hampered by injuries within the pack, by the retirement of Cuddy (which undermined his authority over the selectors in 1986) and by the manner in which Fitzgerald had become distracted from rugby following a career change. But the main problem was his training sessions, which focused overwhelmingly on the backs and on running the ball; little or no work was done on line-outs and scrums, Doyle possessing neither the aptitude nor inclination to engage with this aspect of coaching.

For 1987, a chastened Doyle drafted in Syd Millar to act as the forwards coach and asserted that results did after all matter more than flowing performances. In the 1987 Five Nations Championship, Ireland adopted more conservative and forward‑oriented tactics, winning two and losing two, a reasonable recovery achieved at the cost of sacrificing his principles. This compromise was an unsatisfactory one, as unwilling to repudiate his ideals completely, he kept faith with the 1985 backline, which struggled with having to kick the ball more.

With his three‑year term nearing its end, Doyle's swansong as Ireland coach was the inaugural rugby world cup held in summer 1987 in New Zealand and Australia. Preparations were hampered by his command that all Ireland squad players should not play any club rugby from March (intended to keep them fresh for the world cup, instead it left them rusty) and by the loss of Carr (the linchpin of Ireland's running game), who was forced to retire from rugby by injuries sustained when he was caught up in an IRA bomb blast. Doyle's impending and prolonged absence abroad obliged him to scramble frantically to preserve his business, which was in steady decline due to the distractions of his coaching career. These stresses contributed to his suffering a serious heart attack on arriving in New Zealand in mid May.

He recovered swiftly to oversee Ireland's progress in the tournament but subsequently admitted that he should have returned home, as his poor health left him irritable and unable to provide the team with the coaching it required. His plight conspicuously failed to provide a focus for the squad to rally around, mainly because the disappointments of 1986–7 had led to a marked deterioration in his relations with the players. Beset by poor morale and tactical incoherency, Ireland subsided ingloriously to Australia in the world cup quarter-final.

Journalism, Doyler Returning from the world cup, he was on the brink both of bankruptcy and a nervous breakdown, and it took him nearly six months to recover his bearings. After doing so, he rebuilt his business, concentrating more on marketing niche animal health products than on consultancy. He also pursued a career as a rugby analyst with the Evening Herald (1989–90), the Sunday Independent (1990–98), and RTÉ television and radio (on and off until his death). Shedding any inhibitions about criticising former colleagues and players he had coached, he thrived as an entertaining but strident critic of the IRFU and the Irish rugby team; underlying this irascibility was his disquiet at rugby's inexorable drift towards professionalism. In 1995, his provocations led the Irish rugby team to refuse to give interviews to any newspapers within the Independent Group and led the IRFU to initiate legal action against RTÉ for comments by Doyle suggesting that the national selectors were biased – RTÉ apologised for those remarks. For his part, Doyle in 2000 sued the Sunday Independent, his former employer, when it published an article stating that he had been ostracised by his players towards the end of his period as Ireland coach. The Sunday Independent agreed to a private settlement (reported to be €75,000) and to print an apology.

In 1991, the publication of his autobiography Doyler earned him national notoriety due to its frank account of the collapse of his first marriage in the early 1980s and of his eventual remarriage in 1989 to Mandy, a widow and sixteen years his junior, with whom he had a daughter. His willingness to discuss his experiences in a radio interview in 1987 had created a stir. More controversial still was the sexually explicit nature of his autobiography, which he described as twenty per cent rugby and eighty per cent porn. This judicious proportioning contributed to its best‑seller status and enabled it to withstand overwhelmingly hostile reviews.

Written with irrepressibly Rabelaisian panache (references to nuns abound), and conveying a joyously earthy sense of indulging in sin (an often unappreciated benefit of a religious upbringing), Doyler intersperses liberal views on marital and gender relations (including lengthy fulminations against traditional catholic teaching for instilling sexual neurosis), with puerile accounts rendered in remorselessly chauvinistic terms of his sexual exploits. He proceeded with the autobiography without his first wife's express permission; she nonetheless maintained amicable relations with him and continued as his business partner.

In 1996 he suffered a brain haemorrhage necessitating a lengthy rehabilitation partially paralysed in a wheelchair. He recovered his health and resumed his rugby punditry and business activities, although it was only in the final year of his life that friends and associates noticed that his mental sharpness was being fully restored. In 2001 he published Zero point one six, which recounted these experiences; the title referred to the percentage statistical probability of surviving the brain trauma he had endured. He died in a traffic accident on the Ballygawley Road, Dungannon, Co. Tyrone, on 11 May 2004, and was buried at Millicent cemetery, Co. Kildare.

Assessment His legacy as Ireland coach was a mixed one: he was correct in believing that Irish rugby needed to shed its atavistically conservative approach to using possession, but the excessively idealistic manner in which he went about doing so – while justifiable in the short run in order to overturn ingrained inhibitions – proved unsustainable and created the unfortunate impression that a lively backline and a solid scrum were mutually exclusive propositions. Dean's verdict on Doyle was ambiguous: 'He gave us a belief that we could do anything, whether we could or not' (Irish Times, 12 May 2004). A self‑proclaimed moderniser, Doyle's progressivism was contained firmly within the parameters of amateurism, which he held dear. He acquired a coaching position that he wished never existed (regarding it as a harbinger of professionalism) in order to relinquish most of his authority back to the players, using his media pulpit partly to obscure, partly to justify this subversion. In effect being represented in the media became the main element of his job, a reality that he tacitly acknowledged in his subsequent career path.