Victory confirms Ireland's rude health

Who now would question the wisdom of Ireland's three re-arranged games taking precedence over all else? Hats off then to the bureaucrats in the Six Nations committee and the home unions who bent over backwards to make sure they happened, for days like Saturday remind you that the Championship has a certain indefinable something that nothing else, not the Tri-Nations or even a World Cup, will ever have.

It was a great day for Irish rugby, and a great day for the Six Nations Championship. No doubt more kids were inclined to play on Sunday morning under the watchful eye of mini-rugby coaches, who stack up their car boots and head off on wintry weekend mornings for no financial gain. With the help of the provinces, the feel-good factor will endure for a while longer yet. Truly, Irish rugby has never had it so good.

Whereas the wins over England in 1993 and '94 also reflected wonderfully on Gerry Murphy, Willie Anderson and the players, they tended to mask a great many ills in Irish rugby. By comparison, Saturday's match reflected a sport which has assuredly never been in ruder health.

The IRFU's playing structures are excellent (though we've yet to solve the riddle over what to do with the clubs), collectively the provinces have never been more competitive in Europe and the season before last Ireland won their first ever A championship and shared the Under-21 championship. And now, in pure mathematical terms, Ireland's campaign of four wins out of five makes it this country's best championship since the Grand Slam of 1948.

Inevitably some will say this could have been another Grand Slam, were it not for the mistakes in personnel and perhaps more so in preparation for Murrayfield, and the resulting non-performance there over four long, long weeks ago. I don't buy into it for an instant. We're into if-my-auntie-had territory here.

This is insulting toward the Scots, who could afford to swing from the hip without any pressure. It's more than conceivable that had any or all of Mick Galwey, David Wallace, Peter Stringer, David Humphreys and Kevin Maggs played from the start in Edinburgh, an ill-prepared, rusty and mentally off-kilter Ireland would still have lost anyway.

And who's to say that had they won in Scotland then Ireland would have gone on to beat both Wales and England, especially if the pressure had been shared in a winner-takes-all game last Saturday? At any rate the wounds of Murrayfield were partly the cause of the win over Wales and even the win last Saturday. Aggrieved as Ireland were by the criticism of their performance in Murrayfield, it remained a powerful spur last Saturday.

In any case, good and all as this group of Irish players are, and good as the management ticket is, they're not quite Grand Slam material yet. England, it should be recalled, were four-fifths of the way (not two-fifths) there and having scored precisely 100 points more in their five games deserve to be champions.

England must feel that there is a Celtic conspiracy against them, and it's certainly true to say that the watching Scots and Welsh probably enjoyed the sight of Ireland derailing the sweet chariot even more than we did when our fellow celts denied them in turn. But perhaps the English could ask themselves why they lost. For sure, in large part it's an historical thing, a chance for the little neighbours to bring down the force of the mighty empire. Deep down the envy is borne a little out of respect and fear. Mostly it's to do with the innate superiority complex English pundits and commentators bring to virtually all sport, resulting in comments such as "I bet he (Brian O'Driscoll) wishes he was wearing white today." Or calls for a Lions Test team of 15 Englishmen.

This in turn must explain why so many countries can scarcely conceal their glee over England's repeated sporting failures. Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Germany, France, Australia, the West Indies would all probably extract more joy from beating England in sport than anyone else, and for many others it would at least be their second-favourite conquest.

In a rugby context, and especially with regard to the Six Nations Championship, there are additional factors which make the rest want to gang up on England. The English club owners, apparently under the misapprehension that they invented the game, have treated the championship as if it's an inconvenience which should be run off in a few weeks at the tail end of the season.

The Little Englanders in Twickenham have brokered their own television agreement which has denied away supporters terrestrial coverage of England's home games, and hence have twice been threatened with expulsion for reneging on television and financial agreements with the other home unions.

Despite not winning a Grand Slam since 1995, there have been continued (if declining) comments and polemics emanating from the English game about how, basically, England were becoming too big for the Six Nations. That they and France should go off and play with New Zealand, Australia and South Africa because the little celts don't cut the mustard any more.

So the next time an England player or former player, coach or administrator, or pundit starts mouthing off about how the Six Nations Championship is an inadequate platform for their designs on global dominance, or that they need to be playing in a new Five Nations encompassing themselves France and the big three from the Southern Hemisphere, it will help sow the seeds of more days like Wembley, Murrayfield and Lansdowne Road.

It will do them - and the championship itself - no harm that another Grand Slam has eluded them. They've been reminded the hard way not to take the celts for granted. As Matt Dawson commented in his column for the Daily Telegraph yesterday: "A bad day for England but a very good day for rugby." Jeepers, Dawson - he of the white boots, the mouthy auxiliary referee, the whingeing pom of the Lions' tour - said that? Well actually it was typical of his and England's magnanimity in the wake of what must have been a shattering defeat.

His respect for the Lansdowne Road crowd and occasion, for Keith Wood, Gatland and the Irish team, was palpable. He even put England's defeat in perspective by recalling the reasons for its initial postponement, as well He said losing a rugby match "doesn't seem quite so important anymore."

Besides, Grand Slams should never come easily. Not even to England, much less Ireland.