NEWS:ULTIMATELY, AS was suspected, the passion that drove him threatened to consume him and thus obliged him to walk away from the province he has served unstintingly for a quarter of a century. Eric Elwood will assuredly end his three-year tenure as Connacht coach with his held high at the end of this season but from that point on, with evident relief, his family will come first for a change.

Having informed the Connacht CEO of his decision two weeks ago, and the Connacht squad last Monday, yesterday Elwood confirmed his decision at a press conference in the G Hotel and spoke of the weight off his shoulders, of not wanting to miss out on his children (Laura, 14, Rachel, 8, and Callum 6) and spending some time on the family mobile home in Connemara, something he probably neglected to do over the summer.

“It’s a tough job at the best of times for the obvious reasons. In my case, being from Connacht and living in Galway, it was a 24/7 job. So win or lose, it was always well done or hard luck at the shops or mass. Rugby, rugby, rugby.

“I’m to blame as much for that. I didn’t do it half-arsed. It was fully committed, seven days a week. It was part of my make-up. It’s not like a coach from overseas doing the maximum, that’s it. I live and breathe it 24/7, everywhere I go, everyone knows me. It’s rugby, rugby, rugby. There’s an element of that.”

Even if he was inclined to give too much in his first two seasons as coach, primarily over those summer months planning for this season, it’s still something of a shame he won’t giving any more after this season for, unquestionably, nobody will care more, and you can’t help but wonder if he and others couldn’t have done more to ensure he took some days off and some holiday time away from the game over the summer.

“It’s not delegation. I do work with good people who do their jobs well,” he maintained, repeating how even away from the Sportsground there was still no escape from the game and he was not one to ignore anybody. But he did concede: “I put too much pressure on myself. I have to learn. I learned a lot about myself. I have to be able to take down time and take half days here and there. Do stuff with the kids. So it’s a learning curve for me.”

He admitted he had “been thinking about it for a while” and the more he confided in friends, the more he realised he was making the right decision. “It feels right in my heart, It feels right in my head and it feels right in my gut, and that’s not three bad places to feel it’s okay. So I know I’m doing the right thing.”

As for the curiously early timing, Elwood explained that when Sears began mentioning recruitment for next season, he felt compelled to tell his CEO the truth.

By dint of this, he will give his final season 100 per cent commitment or, if needs be, step aside sooner if that is what Connacht want, for no one, he says, is bigger than the brand.

“That’s really important to me because I want to leave Connacht in a good place, I want to leave a legacy behind me so that when I am in the Clan Terrace next year I can say ‘look I played my part and it’s great to see them push on’. That’s important to me.”

By giving them so much advance notice, a la Michael Cheika at the start of his fifth and final season at Leinster, Elwood has eased the pressure on Sears to decide upon a replacement. While “one or two people have made contact” admitted Sears, and assuredly Eddie O’Sullivan for one will be linked with the job, there is clearly no rush.

“We haven’t decided on any time frame,” said Sears. “The only timeframe we’ve got is we have a meeting of our professional game board next Tuesday where obviously it will be discussed in detail and then we’ll look at the succession planning.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” said Sears, if there were internal applications from the likes of attack/backs coach Billy Millard and forwards coach Dan McFarland.

“We’ve got a very strong panel of coaching staff that are dedicated, committed, knowledgeable, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if somebody internally, or more than one person inside the province, put their hand up.”

With Sears himself newly appointed, a PGB only in place a year and now Elwood leaving, an appointment from within, possibly incorporating some role for Dan Parks, would make sense.

“Our preference is for the best person possible, maybe Irish, maybe from overseas, but we’ve got to get someone who is right for us, where we are at the moment and somebody who can take us the next step,” said Sears.

Elwood has “no idea” what his own future holds beyond this season, but while Sears told him the door would always be open, and he wouldn’t rule out a return to Connacht one day, he said: “I’ll never say never but at the moment it’s not what I’m thinking about.”

Between now and the end of the season, he will say to all: “Let’s really have a cut at the Heineken because that really means a lot to the province,” but admits: “For me in the really short term, I would really love to back up that performance against Leinster against Ulster because as you guys all know, we ultimately get judged on derby matches and the last thing I want is it thrown back in our faces that, yeah, ‘you can do it against Leinster but you couldn’t do it the following week’.

“If we can get a good performance up the North, that would set us up for the Heineken and we would relish the challenge then.”