Outpouring of gratitude a genuinely heart felt salute

You have to put that match in the context of the era. In 1972, we genuinely felt we would have won the Grand Slam. We had a very good team then - we had beaten France and would draw with the All-Blacks in 1973.

And we were desperately disappointed when Scotland and Wales essentially chickened out. So for that reason, the gratitude shown to the England team was a really heartfelt salute.

I think it is to their eternal credit because they had to put up with a great deal of stress and it cannot have been the easiest of situations in which to try and play a game of rugby. On the field, we were all quite jumpy and looking forward to getting on with it and I remember feeling quite relieved when we came to engage for the first scrum.

I remember that England front row clearly - (Brian) Stevens, (John) Pullin and (Fran) Cotton - and once we were scrummaging, it felt like normal service was resumed.

I still think it was a bad decision on the part of Wales and Scotland not to travel. The threats to players had started the previous year. I never received any myself but I know of players who did receive threatening phone calls. It wasn't very pleasant. So we had gone to Cardiff and Murrayfield and were met by a very heavy British security presence.

And we felt certain that the Garda could have offered the same measure of security to the Scottish and Welsh teams, had they visited.

I was studying in London in those years and some of the English players that I knew were naturally quite concerned in the build-up to the match.

I recall talking to Roger Uttley and Andy Ripley beforehand and telling them that, being a Northern Protestant, I was just as much a target for IRA thugs as they were. And they just accepted this and came to play.

Before the 1973 match, there were a few silly people who predicted this disturbance or that, but what actually happened, with that fantastic ovation, was a reflection of what sport meant then to Irish people and continues to mean to us.

And I would hope there is a similar atmosphere in Croke Park.

Ken Kennedy made his debut against France in the 1965 Five Nations. He retired 10 years later as the most capped hooker in the world, with 45 caps. An orthopaedic physician, he lives in London.