No & no

Legend, no.

Brilliant - hmm, totally failed to recruit players or coaches for post 2012 and let dressing room stagnate, maybe his mind was already elsewhere but...

The problem Italy have is that while they make some marginal gains here and there, they're often short lived or the other nations make greater gains. They used to give Scotland a beating on a semi regular basis, and have beaten Wales, Ireland and France before but the rest have moved on and they are better but still way way behind.

Never been an O'Shea fan but respect what he did to win the premiership.

Can't see what he has done for Italian rugby.

If he fails in the RWC his only way forward is to go back into sports admin. Can't see the IRU offering him his dream job in the near future.
 

I thought COS benefited hugely from the preparation work undertaken by the Dean Richards team. I think his great contribution was his positive attitude which gave the players the confidence to go out and express themselves. The mystery to me was that when he announced he was leaving Quins, the performance fell off a cliff (and this was pre JK). So my question was more about the legacy - did his style of management leave one? From a results perspective, it appears not. Was he too domineering? Was their a lack of bringing on the next generation of coaches / managers? To be fair, this problem seems to exist with so many clubs where the top (very successful) manager leaves. It should be something the Board should keep a very close eye on and be responsible for. Slightly off topic, I know, as this is about Italy, but I hope the Italian top management are keeping an eye on this.

I thought COS deserved credit for winning the Prem, regardless of whether it was a Dean Richards/Mark Evans legacy, he still had to get the team to pick themselves up and get over that line.

However, his recruitment seemed to be of the bargain basement kind, anyone available who was going cheap got bought up. Of course that sometimes worked, but it left a lopsided team and performance had fallen off before he left, I thought.

I don't think it likely that having won the Prem there wasn't increased money for players.