O'Sullivan defiant despite defeat

Eddie O'Sullivan tonight vowed to fight on as Ireland coach despite presiding over a torrid season that slumped to a new low with the 33-10 RBS 6 Nations defeat by England.

Ireland endured an abysmal exit from the group stages of the World Cup last autumn, have slumped to eighth place in the world rankings and today concluded their worst Six Nations Championship since 1999.

Calls for O'Sullivan's dismissal have intensified in response to the team's decline but the 49-year-old refused to step down.

He said: 'My own position is that at this moment in time I'm not making any decisions about anything.

'What we always do after every major tournament is meet with the Irish Rugby Football Union to discuss the bigger picture and that will happen again.

'After that I suppose we'll know what we're doing going forward but until then there's not much point in doing anything.

'Absolutely I believe I am the right man to lead Irish rugby.

'I think the big question for me is have I got the hunger for this job and the answer to that is absolutely, 100%.

'I love this job and I've always given it 110%. If I thought I couldn't give 110% I'd be the first to admit that.

'But I love this job and I intend to give it everything I have as long as I'm doing it.''

O'Sullivan insisted he had no regrets over the way he approached the tournament.

He said: 'It's been a disappointing championship for us. We wanted to hit the ground running and have a big tournament but unfortunately we spluttered instead of playing.

'We didn't have a good start against Italy, our performance against France was excellent and we were unlucky to lose our game.

'We had a good performance against Scotland and then suffered a setback against Wales. Today we tried to pick it up again but it didn't happen and to be fair to England they played well and took their opportunities.

'It's been a disappointing Six Nations because in the recent past we've always managed to win more than we lose but that's been turned around this year as we've lost more than we've won.

'I wouldn't do anything differently, we took each game on its merit and tried to win them all.

'If I could change results I would but I don't think you could say that we went out and did anything foolish. We gave it our best shot in every game, in some games it happened for us, some games it didn't.'

Ireland raced into a 10-0 lead when Rob Kearney crossed with only four minutes on the clock with Ronan O'Gara landing the conversion and a penalty, but the visitors could not sustain that early momentum.

O'Sullivan said: 'On the day the better team won, the final score was a reasonable reflection of their dominance.

'I'd say the area that really worked in their favour was the midfield. Their midfield worked well together as a unit. They caused us problems in that area and we didn't do the same to them.

'The midfield is the one area where we've been having a few problems with injuries and have had to shuffle guys around.

'We didn't have the cohesion that England had in that area. That was the difference between the teams, they were able to do more damage with the ball.'