The IRFU are set to announce their replacement for outgoing attack coach Mike Catt in the coming weeks, but performance director David Nucifora is staying tight-lipped on their target's identity.
Catt's expected departure was confirmed yesterday as an addendum to their announcement that head coach Andy Farrell had agreed a contract extension until the end of the 2027 Rugby World Cup.
The union have moved quickly to secure the Irish coach's services, while they're also wasting little time in moving to complete his coaching ticket, with Nucifora confirming they're at an advanced stage in talks with Catt's replacement.
"We're obviously talking to someone and it’s confidential but we’ll probably be in a position to announce it within a few weeks," he said at a media briefing at the IRFU high performance centre in Dublin yesterday.
Interestingly, Nucifora wouldn't be drawn on whether or not their target is one from within the Irish system, which naturally set tongues wagging about a potential role in the coaching set-up for Johnny Sexton.
The former Ireland captain retired from playing after the World Cup in October, and while he has taken up a job as a commercial manager for the sustainable packaging firm Ardagh Group, several of his former coaches and team-mates have predicted him to be a coach in-waiting.
Nucifora wouldn't reveal whether or not Sexton (above) is on the shortlist to replace Catt when the attack coach returns to England after the summer tour of South Africa, but said the IRFU would always be interested in having him involved.
"If he chose he'd like to do that [coaching] we’d absolutely work with him. I think for Johnny at the moment it’s just taking a bit of time to take a deep breath. It’s been a long career to decompress and work out in his own head what he really wants to do.
"There’s obviously a lot of rugby intellect in there and you’d like to access it or use it in some way if you had the ability to do it, but he’s got to decide what it is that floats his boat over the next period of time, but if he ever chose to want to come back into coaching the Irish system would be mad to say no to him."
Barring any unlikely developments over the coming months, appointing a new Ireland attack coach will be Nucifora's last major bit of business in the XV's game before he leaves his role in the summer.
The Australian will end a 10-year tenure as performance director when he steps down after the Olympic Games in Paris, to be replaced by David Humphreys. Humphreys and Nucifora will tag-team the job from March until the early summer to ease the transition, while the outgoing director will then work exclusively with the Sevens programme in the lead up to the Paris games.
One of Nucifora's biggest coups in his decade in Irish rugby was the decision to bring current head coach Farrell (below) into the set-up, initially as defence coach under Joe Schmidt in 2016, after he was let go by England in the wake of their 2015 World Cup failure.
And with Farrell now set to lead Ireland into another World Cup cycle to 2027, he predicts the Englishman could go on to be regarded as one of the game's all-time great coaches.
"We approached Andy very quickly in 2015 because I saw him as a guy who definitely had the ability to be a head coach and we're all aware of Andy's career as a player; the guy's a winner, he finds an ability to get things done.
"The first four years of his tenure, the way that he contributed as an assistant coach was outstanding and he's actually gone on to become an even better head coach that I ever thought he would be in such a short period of time.
"When you look at what he's been able to do in four years, I think that in another four years he's going to have evolved himself personally as a head coach as well and the way he looks at things.
"If he keeps improving himself at the rate that he's done in the first four years, I think you're going to have a coach that is going to be one of the all-time great coaches," Nucifora added.
Below we have highlighted some of the questions and answers during Nucifora's briefing.
One external criticism of the World Cup performance was that the same players played too many games back to back. Is this something that has come up in the World Cup review?
"It's something that we looked at but obviously it was a strategy of ours to be able to do that. We don't just decide on the day that that’s what we were going to do. We had a plan about how we wanted to go about that. Our players were superbly conditioned and had the ability to cope with the loads that were presented to them.
"Sometimes, having that cohesion in your team and being able to get on a roll like that is really important as well. So, sometimes you might make a choice to say: 'OK, well, I’ll choose to play a different team.’ And other teams made those decisions.
"But I think we’re really comfortable with the decisions we made around how we use the game time of all of our players, so I don’t think we’d look at that. We certainly don’t look at that as a reason why we lost to New Zealand by a couple of points."
Was there any sense of the same 'performance anxiety' from 2019 in the 2023 quarter-final defeat to New Zealand?
"No, not at all. Not at all. I think that you only have to look at the quality of the performances for the 15 or 16 months leading up into that. It wasn't an issue. I mean, it’s a game of rugby and you’ve got four teams at the moment in the world who I think on any given day could beat each other if you played them multiple times.
"There’s probably two instances in that game where the ball might have bounced differently or we might have made a different decision about a certain time we decided to do something, and that’s probably the difference between winning and losing that game.
"So I certainly don’t relate that to performance anxiety in any way, shape or form. It’s a high-level international rugby match with fine margins and unfortunately that’s the way that game panned out."
What would you hope to be your legacy in Irish rugby?
"I think I've just enjoyed the challenge, I think the challenge... I still remember sitting in the Aviva nine and a half, 10 years ago talking to you guys and we were ambitious, I was ambitious with what we could do.
"Now, we haven't achieved everything and that's disappointing that we haven't been able to tick that World Cup piece; but there's been lots of other achievements in there, from beating New Zealand to Grand Slams to the evolution of our pathways, the sustainability of the pathways that are in place.
"We're producing players now at such a rate that we've left a healthy system both provincially and internationally. Something that I'd be proud of is the mindset. Irish teams go on to the field now and they know they can beat anyone.
"That shift in mindset is something that's super important for success going forward. We weren't in that position 10 years ago when we hadn't beaten New Zealand. Now, we've got players coming in and that's what they expect. So, for me, that's something that's particularly important."
How will the IRFU deal with the bottleneck of talent emerging at the four provinces?
"It's a good problem to have. It's a challenge or a problem that we've created ourselves and now we've got to deal with that.
"We will be continuing with the likes of the Emerging Ireland scenario because it worked unbelievably well, not just for Irish rugby but for the players, it worked really well for our coaches on a number of fronts.
"The players need to feel like they've always got an opportunity or a chance to impress and sometimes in a four-team environment they may feel they're not getting enough opportunity to do that.
"So by connecting those players who were getting less game time when we brought the Emerging Ireland concept in and connecting them directly with the national coaches, it achieved things to the level that we probably hadn't thought it would."
The role of the All-Ireland League going forward?
"Look, the clubs will always be valuable to professional rugby. I mean, the number of players that we have playing AIL each week, we monitor closely.
"So it's mainly our academy players in the first couple of years that are soaking up time in the AIL and that's incredibly valuable for their development, so we need that competition to remain as strong as it can be because they're helping us to develop those players that are coming through our system.
"We've just got to make sure that the gap doesn't get too big between where the professional game is moving and where the club game is.
"As I said before, the big thing about the professional game now is the speed with which it moves and evolves and that's hard for anyone to keep up with, the clubs included.
"So we've got to try to keep that gap at a reasonable rate so that those younger players benefit from playing club football."
What advice would you give to David Humphreys when he takes over your role?
"Look, he will take the time to get a feel of what's here, what’s in place. It’s not an easy job, this one. It has its moments and you’ve got to be prepared to be able to deal with all kinds of different scenarios and situations.
"At the end of the day, what I’ve always tried to do is what’s right for Irish rugby and I’m sure David will have that same intention. At times you get questioned on those decisions you’re forced to make so I’m sure that over time he’s going to face some difficult scenarios.
"He’s a wise guy who’s been around the block and I’m sure he’s well capable of being able to steer the ship really well."
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