Here we take our comforts where we can. So we smiled serenely yesterday as the massive inflatable rugby ball, hanging in the torso of the Eiffel Tower, slowly deflated to a formless, flaccid, embarrassingly detumescent lump of rubber. Kathy Sheridanreports from in Paris.
A timely metaphor for all things French, we decided.
Any Doubting Paddies could take a spin to the fourth floor of Galeries Lafayette for the display of "creative" rugby shirts fashioned by French artists. One boasts a frilly skirt and rhinestones; another is festooned with fake white roses. Suits you, garçons.
And when the game is up, you may marcher along to the official Rugby World Cup shop and console yourselves with a toy World Cup trophy and a pair of baby dummies for a fiver.
Pardon our contempt, but maintenant it's personal. First Rog. Now Eddie. Fans like Keith McArdle and Gerard Savage from Dundalk, with hardly a "oui" to their name, were lashing out 85c for the French-language sports daily, l'Équipe, the better to whet their resentment. To be sure, there were green shirts on the streets who reckoned that some of the paper's comments about Eddie "The Dagger" weren't all that wide of the mark, but merde, he's OUR little Dagger.
In warm, sunny Paris, the temperature was rising in more ways than one. As the genial, reassuring bulk of Mick Galwey loomed into Kitty O'Shea's, we looked to him for perspective.
It's only a game, Mick, isn't that right? Pause. Mick? "Of all the games we've ever played - particularly in the professional era - if we lose this one, our credibility is gone down the drain", said Mick. Yikes. "Well, we came here wanting to win the World Cup and our backs are to the wall. If we don't win this, we could be heading home."
Is there apprehensiveness in the air, a frisson of terror, peut-être? "You have to believe," said Winifred Ryan from Knocklyon, with a brave smile. Her brother Jack and friends Dave and Suzanne O'Malley nodded in unison. Dave, a Munster man to his fingertips, was sanguine about the dropping of Stringer from the squad.
"It was [ Geordan] Murphy who was the sacrificial calf," he said, echoing a few hundred thousand views.
"Terrified? I'm not terrified," said Paul Dowling, of Sandycove and St Mary's RFC, stoutly. "They're due a big performance. We're not worried if we win or lose." Excuse us? "We want them to do themselves credit. We want them to step up to the plate and give the performance they're due." And - echoing another few hundred thousand views - he added: "they need to just play rugby. I think they're overtrained. They need to be less contrived."
John O'Meara, from Kilcock, Co Kildare, via Co Tipperary, is nursing a small grudge about Stringer being dumped out of the squad, "but the Munster guys are strong enough to stand up and put all that behind them. I'm VERY optimistic. This is the big pressure game for France. I think we'll do it."
Mind you, he backed France at 10/1 before the competition. "I think I have a bad bet," he conceded.
Gerard Carroll, from Drogheda, here with his brothers Vincent and Martin, confessed he was "anxious". "I lived in Paris and I've reason to be anxious. France are under a lot of pressure. The crowd is very fickle and can turn on them very easily."
Martin is taking the high road: "I'm going to shout for them to win no matter what. Once they put their hearts into it, you can't ask for more." There's only one way to answer the "heat" from the French media, says Mick Galwey, "and that's for the team, management and more importantly, the supporters, to gel together. With all the stuff that's been said, we now have the opportunity to put everything right."
Whatever happens tonight, tomorrow Irish fans in France can remind themselves that no cow died (as they say in Munster after a sporting calamity) and relish their ownership of a majestic piece of Paris by availing of the Irish Embassy open day.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern is anxious for you to see where your €2.5 million went on the refurbishment. The bad news is you have to bring your own verres et vin but a spokesman says they won't leave you stuck for a bottle opener. The address is 12 Avenue Foch, off the Champs Élysées, and opening hours are 11am to 4pm.