Hair shirt begins to chafe

If you can lose your head when all around you are keeping theirs, then, my son, you may play ball with Ireland. Ah, the Five Nations. A time of challenge, of looking in on the rugby soul, of reflection and consolation. Sacred times.

We let them in, shut them out, then let them in again. It wasn't the rugby, it was the concentration. It wasn't the tactics, it was the decision making. Head problems at Lansdowne Road?

"It weren't that we didn't deserve to win," said Brian Ashton. "But it don't matter what we do if we make those mistakes," he warned in his nononsense Lancastrian drawl.

How frustrating it must be for the theorist. He draws the blue print, but the bungling technicians keep muddling the experiment.

"Gutted" - that was Keith Wood. "Inexcusable" - that was Malcolm O'Kelly. "Frustrated" - that was Eric Miller. "Buggered at half-time" - that was Dodie Weir.

Ah, the Five Nations, Irish rugby's hair shirt. We wear it each year for the sin of being a small nation in a big competition. Enter Vere Wynne Jones with a microphone. "We want the biggest roar in the world," he demanded. The team from the Guinness Book of Records had arrived and we were to roar into a cardboard cone in unison for Ireland. It was to be a Lansdowne roar. And, according to the sponsors, at 125.4 decibles, it was, indeed, a record.

The IRFU, meanwhile, made a small effort to bankrupt themselves as, after 20 minutes, a trickle of humanity turned to a flow and washed in and around the advertising hoarding. How many account executives choked on their hip flasks at that moment as their precious products were blotted out from the television cameras? For five long minutes, Lansdowne pitch looked like Killorglin on Puck Fair day as stewards went about herding the feral mob to the other side of the pitch. And in the middle of it, a rugby match.

Ah, the Five Nations. Poppy running a breadth of the pitch, heaving one scrum and then off again. A nice little win bonus there if you could get it. Paul Wallace getting the match-costing cosh from the referee for his binding. Keith Wood - is he flat? Miller - he can run like a back and kick like a county footballer. Denis Hickie - he can run and run and run. But who can score? Four weeks of soul-searching before Paris. History tells us we will not win. With leaden legs and heavier spirits, the hair shirt is getting harder to wear.