An Irish Diary

England Expects, Ireland Expectorates: Frank McNally on our most intense sporting rivalry

Johnny Sexton at a training session at the Aviva yesterday. Photograph: Dan Sheridan/Inpho

Frank McNally's face
Frank McNally
Fri Feb 1 2019 - 18:20

One of my oldest memories of watching the Five Nations Rugby tournament, as it was then, was of Ireland playing England on a wet day in the 1970s. And the only bit I recall now is a pile-up of players, rolling in the muck around a ball of indeterminate location, with steam rising off their backs.

The moment would have been entirely unmemorable except that my father, who must have been working outside, chose this moment to come in and glance at the screen for a few seconds. Then he delivered his considered verdict on the spectacle: “That’s an eejit’s game”.

Although mainly a GAA man, who also had a weakness for Manchester United, he was not a rugby bigot. He had probably never thought about the sport until then: it didn’t happen anywhere near where we lived. And it was hard to disagree with him, at that moment anyway. I felt vaguely ashamed to be watching such a thing.

Yet ever since we first acquired a TV, I was invariably glued to it for the Five Nations, and for Ireland-England in particular. That always felt like so much more than a game. The very nature of the sport – a (mostly) safe, legal way in which two teams could beat each other up – allowed it to carry great historical baggage.

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So when England dominated the 80 minutes, it was an economy-pack version of the 800 Years of Oppression. When Ireland won, it was Yellow Ford, Fontenoy, and Easter Week combined. The fact that our team usually included a few northern unionists did not diminish this. Willie John McBride always seemed to derive special enjoyment from beating England too.

And overall, despite many grim defeats to the team in mud-and-white, Ireland has punched above the weight of history in the fixture. A win today would be our 50th, compared with 76 for England: not a bad average, considering the relative populations. More pertinently, it would also confirm a 21st-century shift in the balance of power.

Since the famously delayed foot-and-mouth game of October 2001, when Keith Wood crashed through the England defence like a bullock escaping an abattoir, the score in competitive games is 11-7 to the good guys.

In fairness, we must pause here to remind ourselves that the English have not always been baddies. There was of course 1973, when they earned eternal credit by risking a visit to Dublin after both Wales and Scotland had preferred discretion to valour.

More recently, there was an echo of that on a whole different level of competition: the one to host the 2023 World Cup. England voted for Ireland’s doomed bid, while our Celtic cousins cheerfully stabbed us in the back with a French-supplied knife.

There is also the epochal 2007 game at Croke Park when, as the script demanded, the English fielded their weakest team in living memory. That may not have been deliberate, but it was apt atonement for the red carpet incident four years earlier. This time, England played the part of the carpet, spreading themselves under our feet.

Still, hammerings by England go a long way in renewing the bitterness. The one in 2003 had a half-life of several years. It took a string of Brian O’Driscoll-inspired wins in the decade afterwards before that cordoned-off area of memory could be visited without protective gear again.

It’s traditional to explain the depth of feeling behind games against England as a residue of colonialism. Against that, the most celebrated pre-match talk on the theme was from a country that has never strictly-speaking been an English colony.

Phil Bennett’s 1977 rant – “Look what these bastards have done to Wales” – proved that, even if the English had indeed stole all the coal, the Welsh had enough resentment stocked up to heat their homes for decades.

But experience of colonisation does add to the feeling. Remember the frantic closing minutes of the 2015 Six Nations, when England had to beat France by 26 points to overhaul us? Leading by 20 with time up, they lost the ball, causing premature celebrations here.

Then, to our horror, the French played on.

And why not? They had nothing to lose, and possible honour to gain. So their opponents had another chance too. More madness ensued until, happily, the ball fell to a French player of South African birth. Unlike his team-mates, he knew that at least half the point of international sport is to annoy England. Without further ceremony, he booted the ball dead.

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