Three of Ireland's heroes talk to Gerry Thornleythrough an unforgettable day in Irish rugby

Perfect start

A 5.30pm kick-off on a Saturday is about perfect. Not too early, not too late.

And the players like it too. No alarm clock calls, no worries about not having a good sleep the night before, no rushing, no chicken and pasta forced down the throat for breakfast, no hanging around interminably all day. For the Munster contingent, it's long since been their established home diet on Heineken European Cup days.

As the national fitness and strength coach, Mike McGurn is never done working, and on this day he began ahead of everyone else. Because the Wasps scrumhalf Eoin Reddan was in camp as cover, McGurn took him to the Radisson Hotel gym at 9am for a workout.

By 8.45am, three players were down for breakfast. Simon Easterby, as is his norm, Marcus Horan and, more unusually, Gordon D'Arcy. A scattered affair, breakfast ran until 11.30am.

Denis Leamy had a good feeling about the day as soon as he woke up. Leamy, who roomed with Rory Best, wandered down to breakfast at 11am and described the day's build-up as low-key and relaxed.

"Sometimes you can get the vibe of how the week is going by the way guys train. The intensity was up and the skills were up, and there wasn't a lot of mistakes. That gives you confidence going into a big game.

"We'd all been very disappointed with how the French game went. We watched the tapes and personally I thought we were a bit sluggish and I was very disappointed with my own display. So it was a day for putting that to right, and when you work hard things are more likely to come off for you."

Having missed the French game, Peter Stringer was especially excitable. "I roomed with poor old Wally (David Wallace) again. I didn't do him any favours, being hyper and giddy around the place. It works well during the week but we're kind of chalk and cheese the night before the game and the morning of a match. He prefers to be left alone whereas I'm enjoying the whole thing."

The squad went to the nearby pitches at St Andrew's at 1.30; lineout work for the pack, which Stringer admits contained a few blips, and ostensibly a bit of fresh air for the backs, a quick game of "walking touch", as Shane Horgan calls it.

McGurn played "possession football with Graham Steadman, Mark Tainton, Barry O'Sullivan, Eddie's son, Tom Steadman, Graham's son, and Brian O'Driscoll of all people. He jumped in for a bit. But there was a significant lack of tension that day compared to the French game. I noticed that straight away."

The squad went back to the Radisson for their pre-match meal: Chicken and pasta, pancakes, rice pudding, juices and smoothies, beans and toast.

Players drifted back to their rooms; some got strapping done; some watched the start of the Scotland-Italy game.

"Jesus, Paulie, that must be wrong," exclaimed McGurn when seeing the score was 21-0 after eight minutes.

"No, it's not. They scored three tries in the first six minutes" said O'Connell.

"Again, Paulie was very relaxed and I thought to myself this is a different guy from the one I spoke to before the French game two weeks previously."

After lunch, the squad assembled for a briefing at 3.20pm before leaving for Croke Park at 3.30pm. The players were required to bring tuxedos, as they would be going from Croke Park to the Shelbourne Hotel for the post-match banquet.

"How come you've got your tuxes lads?" asked one or two who had forgotten.

"You can name Jerry Flannery as one of them," laughs Stringer.

Just before they left, it began pouring rain, and Horgan was among those who wondered if this meant they wouldn't be able to keep the ball in their hands as much as they'd planned. He was also more nervous than normal.

"There was more interest from outside rugby and more texts coming from well-wishers and people you hadn't heard from in a while. Those things add to the nerves," he recalls.

For this and previous generations of Irish players there used to be the short skip from the Berkeley Court to Lansdowne Road and, as the old saying about the Dublin bus service went, it would have been quicker to walk.

Going via the East Link with a police escort, McGurn noticed there was far less traffic on the journey to Croke Park than two weeks before, a 29-minute trip now taking just 17 or 18 minutes. A Saturday evening game meant supporters left cars behind and walked from pubs in town or travelled by bus or taxi.

Arriving at Croker

The earlier arrival enabled Ronan O'Gara and Paddy Wallace to get in more kicking practice. Others went for a walk around the pitch. Some stayed in the dressing-room and flicked through the match programme. Injured for the French game, Stringer had passed a fitness test on Thursday and felt good.

Photographed during the week with the injured hand in a white brace, he changed to exactly the same strapping, but in brown so as to disguise it, and even his father didn't notice. Normally John Stringer would be worried such a sight might be too tempting a target for opponents.

Horgan likes arriving early. No rushing, and a chance to walk around the stadium. "I always give my dad a quick ring before the game and he just wishes me good luck and then I go back and get changed."

"There was a massive roar as we walked out for the warm-up," recounts Leamy. "I remember thinking: 'Jesus, they're up for this. This means something to them.' And that gives you a buzz to get stuck into the warm-up. It was a nice feeling."

"Our warm-up always lasts 21-and-a-half minutes without fail," says McGurn.

"We practise our warm-up on a Thursday. It probably wasn't as vocal as the French game, but it seemed a bit more clinical. Maybe there were fewer nerves, I don't know."

During it, O'Driscoll said to the players: "Boys, it's good at the moment. Come kick-off it's going to be ******* electric."

There had been a near stampede about 45 minutes before kick-off when gardai relented and allowed people through security barriers, causing quite a crush. Irish rugby crowds are traditionally tardy, but virtually everyone was keen to be there for the anthems. Hence, the reception - when the players returned to the dressing-room - akin to Thomond Park.

"You only have a few minutes to throw on the pads and the headgear," says Leamy. "You have the leaders, like Drico, Paulie and Rog, all chipping in with good stuff. Word came back into the dressing-room that the English were delayed so that delayed us, and then we decided we might stay in for a couple more minutes to leave them out there to sample the atmosphere," recounts Leamy mischievously.

"To hear the English team applauded onto the pitch worked in our favour, because the cheer for us then was unbelievable," says Stringer.

The anthems

Four years before, Martin Johnson's England had been able to feed off their resentment from the pre-match dispute but he would have had nothing here to latch on to. Horgan, Leamy and Stringer are as one in choosing the reception afforded God Save the Queen as the day's highlight.

"That was the standout for me," says Horgan. "The impeccable silence, and the behaviour of all the fans, and how well it was respected, I thought, was a credit to the whole nation. That, in conjunction with the deafening roar.

"Very often the crowd gets into the game at the start, or after a score, but it seemed to continue the whole way through the game. In Lansdowne you're very close to the spectators, you can almost hear what they're saying, and I really love that about Lansdowne. Croke Park is different. It's more of a constant, deafening din."

A Fermanagh man, rooted in rugby league and a big GAA fan, McGurn says: "I had been to several All-Ireland finals, both football and hurling, and I had never heard Amhrán na bhFiann sung like that before."

"I'll never, ever forget it. The noise. I've never experienced anything like it," says the 73-times-capped Stringer. "Normally when you sing the anthem you can kind of hear yourself singing it and sometimes you're kind of embarrassed. I haven't a note in my head, and sometimes when the camera passes in front of you, 'Oh God, can the whole country hear me singing this?' On this occasion the crowd seemed to drown out my own voice and I couldn't hear myself. So you were able to give it extra holly."

The kick-off

Jonny Wilkinson's opening kick-off went to Leamy.

"I dropped one against France and I was disappointed with that, so I'd put in a bit of extra work on catching the ball. I had a fair idea the first one would drop on top of me so it was nice to catch that, get a feel of the ball early on and from then on I was into the game."

Although Wilkinson would open the scoring, Horgan was encouraged by how Ireland had moved their first ball wide for O'Driscoll to kick downfield.

"There'd been a lot of talk about our slow starts and we were 3-0 down but I thought that start showed a lot of ambition and a lot of courage. We'd shown a lot of intent and that was important, I think."

Girvan Dempsey, oozing assurance from the back, soon broke Wilkinson's tackle for Ronan O'Gara to draw the sides level. Andy Farrell took the ball up to Gordon D'Arcy, who held him up for Leamy and David Wallace to force a turnover penalty. Leamy, pumped up, has a few words with Magnus Lund.

"It was a big moment, and every little thing helps you settle into the match," he says. "With someone like Rog, you get territory and work the penalty. You're nearly guaranteed that he'll kick the points, and that's exactly what you need."

O'Connell was on fire. McGurn reveals that during the preceding two weeks the lock set a couple of PBs (personal bests): "He dumbbelled a single-arm snatch at 60k, which is probably hard for the ordinary punter to fathom, but for a rugby player to snatch 60k with one arm is incredible. It's almost up to world standards in weightlifting.

"He also set a PB in his counter-movement jump, which indicates a player's leg-strength power. He jumped 52.8."

In the 10 minutes prior to O'Gara's third penalty, O'Connell won four successive lineouts, two on each throw.

Dempsey's try

Horgan's influence was becoming more pronounced and the match began to turn when he dummied to Leamy's inside run and then offloaded in the tackle for Simon Easterby's diagonal run to the corner.

"It was just off the cuff. We'd numbered off a bit, so we worked a dummy switch and I managed to get the ball into Simon's hands, and it was only on the video I realised that he really stuck it under his arm and went for it."

Danny Grewcock came through on Stringer too early and was binned, with the 5ft 7in scrumhalf, some seven stone and eight lbs lighter, itching for a scrap with the 6ft 7in lock. Later that night they were sitting beside each other at the dinner and had a laugh about it.

"The lads at the table were stirring it up a small bit. Wally was sticking up for him at the table, which was payback for the way I was treating him on the morning of the game."

His pass off the ensuing lineout maul was possibly Stringer's worst of the match.

"Absolutely brutal," he admits "Whatever happened, I thought there was somebody running short and I gave a rugby-league-

style pass and there was no power in it whatsoever. I don't know how we managed to score."

"I thought we might have been playing too flat on the line," adds Horgan, "but it was a beautiful flick by Darce, and I was just hoping the ball would come all the way out to me on the wing but Girvan was never going to pass it out," chuckles Horgan.

"I remember Ronan saying, 'Let's turn the screw,' and collectively that was the mindset," adds Horgan. "You don't want them to come back and score straightaway. It's something we have been guilty of in the past."

Back Ireland came, Wallace and Stringer forcing Joe Worsley over the English line from a big Irish scrum on the English put-in.

"They say forwards love to see the ball in front of them," comments Horgan. "They love when they stand up from a scrum and they see the flyhalf kick the ball 40 metres. But from a back's point of view, when you see a scrum on the opposition line and we turn over ball, that focuses the mind even more to say, 'Look, these lads are doing their job, we have to do ours.'"

Soon Wallace, in his own inimitable fashion, rumbled over, with Donncha O'Callaghan, as is his wont, there to help.

"Wally is unbelievable," says Stringer. "His legs are like tree trunks. He's one of the quickest guys in the squad over 30 or 40 metres, and the knee lift makes it that more difficult to bring him down. Thankfully, I don't have to do it too often."

At 23-3, the Irish players fairly galloped off the pitch when Joël Jutge blew for half-time, their English counterparts trudging behind. O'Driscoll waited at the entrance to the tunnel to clap all his team-mates in.

Half-time

"There were no slaps on the back," recalls Leamy. "The game wasn't over but we were confident that we just had to keep running at them, stringing phases together.

"I remember feeling really, really fresh, and other guys say the same thing," recalls Stringer. "We had another 40 minutes, not to hang on, but another 40 minutes to actually go and put more scores on them.

"Steady" Steadman, Niall O'Donovan and Eddie O'Sullivan all spoke calmly and clearly, O'Sullivan emphasising England might well have a purple patch, and the key would be how Ireland reacted, to keep playing high-tempo rugby and take the game to England.

Horgan: "We knew there was a good chance they would come back into the game, and that the best way to defend our lead was to continue playing our game. There's a lot of experienced players in the dressing-room and luckily a lot of us are of similar mindsets. There are a lot of caps in the room, but Eddie and Drico are the main voices."

The second half

O'Gara having immediately added another penalty, England put some width on their game to ask Ireland a few questions, leading to David Strettle's try.

"I was slightly at fault for that," admits Horgan. "I should have slid off and I came in when I shouldn't have. I should have known the inside was good on the push, that Drico and Darce are really good at that. Even after the game it would have been so nice to shut them out altogether."

The defining moment, in many ways, was Ireland's response to the Wilkinson penalty that made it 26-13. Corry was under O'Gara's long, hanging restart inside the English 22, and O'Connell and O'Callaghan drove him back, leading to Julian White conceding a penalty for stamping. O'Callaghan led Ireland's tackle count with 18, a phenomenal tally for a lock.

"Once Rog kicked that penalty we had the game by the scruff of the neck," says Leamy.

Tempo, tempo, tempo.

"As long as you have them on the back foot you can create things on the move," explains Stringer. "You don't have to slow things down to organise things. You get quick ball and you just go, you trust guys around you to make the right decisions and there's enough experience in the squad for guys to play things off the cuff."

Horgan's try

Leamy rumbled off the base of the scrum: "We planned to target Wilkinson down that channel and make him turn in. That was going to create a bit of space for the boys out wide. I presumed they'd put it through the hands and I only saw the try on the big screen running back. A great take by Shaggy. As good as anything you'd see on a county field."

Horgan had invoked his childhood, playing Gaelic football with Bellewstown, Duleek and St Mary's school, and reveals he and Denis Hickie had talked about how fitting it would be to score off a crosskick.

"I have to say it was one of the tries that made me happiest. The day, the occasion and the style of it. Ronan is such a skilled player at that, he doesn't kick it too high, he kicks it low, which makes it a lot easier to catch. When he puts it on a sixpence like that it makes my job a lot easier."

When O'Driscoll was receiving treatment for a cut near an eye, the feeling in the huddle was that the English players were there for the taking. Ireland's dominance of the physical collisions was one of the day's abiding images, and McGurn takes pride in the team's fitness and conditioning.

"That's my job, that's what I get paid to do and if they weren't fit I should get the sack. I've always said that once they started to get a proper pre-season - which I was used to in rugby league - it was going to be a two-, three-, four-year plan. It wasn't going to happen overnight. I would have to admit, hand on heart, we are probably as fit as some of the rugby league players I've worked with in the past, which is a great compliment to them."

For all their big wins in recent years, Ireland had never put a Big Five side to the sword like this. But there had been a desire to be ruthless.

"It is a mental thing," agrees Stringer. "Whether it's deep down in the back of your head - 'Oh, it's England, we shouldn't be beating them by this number of points.' We've got to get beyond that. We've got to set our own standards. Play the tempo we want to play, no matter who we're playing. Guys were enjoying defending, almost pushing each other out of the way to make tackles. There was a great sense of it being good fun, of wanting to stay out there for another 40 minutes."

Stringer was one of the seven hauled off to allow all 22 be involved and saw his replacement, Isaac Boss, apply the coup de grâce. On the pitch Horgan walked back to halfway with David Wallace, both too tired to join in the celebrations.

"We said we'd leave it until we saw him (Boss) after the match," laughs Horgan.

Full-time

Ireland 43 England 13. On the full-time whistle, Leamy just remembers this huge feeling of pride: "To have come away from Croke Park and not won would have been very disappointing. I think we owed it to the rugby public and to the sporting public of Ireland to come up with a big performance and do ourselves justice. And it was great that we did it against England."

It appeared, for a moment, as if the players were considering a lap of honour, but Horgan says that was never an option: "We've moved beyond that as a team and hopefully we'll do a lap of honour if we win something."

Leamy admits, "We would have been slapping ourselves on the back too much if we'd gone on to a lap of honour."

The contrast between the Irish dressing-room last Saturday and the previous Sunday week was something that struck Horgan.

"That's the way sport is. It can be very, very difficult sometimes. It was just morbid two weeks ago and it was just elation two weeks later, and it's a very fine line; just 30 seconds or a minute in the difference."

Most of the players hopped into their tracksuits for corporate gigs, enjoyed a rushed get-together with family and friends, an escape from the hype and the frenzy, before changing into their tuxedos for the banquet.

When the team coach was driving along O'Connell Street, McGurn recalls, "It was almost as if we'd won the World Cup. The euphoria that was generated was fantastic."

"The Shelbourne Hotel is a very Irish hotel," says Horgan. "There's the history of the Constitution being written there and it seems almost appropriate for the day that was in it that we ate there."

Wilkinson, Josh Lewsey and Mike Tindall were among those at Horgan's table: "They were very gracious, and they're good guys as well. You know how the other people are feeling; you've been there, so you deal with each other in the correct manner."

Phil Vickery spoke graciously.

"He didn't make any excuses, and wished us all the best not just for the rest of the Six Nations but also for the World Cup," says McGurn.

"From meeting people after the game and knowing how much it meant to them has taken it to a new level which you wouldn't have thought possible," observes Stringer. "Every single person was just over the moon. I remember meeting Packie Bonner at the function after the game, he was all handshakes and hugs. Seeing how much it meant to people, I'll never forget it."

Most of the squad headed out into the night and ended up in the same club.

A "shattered" Stringer left the majority behind at about 4am.

"A great night, a long night," laughs Horgan.

Dublin was akin to Limerick on the night of a big Heineken European Cup match. Green jerseys everywhere. With 32,000 more tickets, it seemed everyone had been there, or had watched.

"I had a few pints with a few of the boys and got home around seven. It was a good night," says Leamy. "I'm proud to have played at Croke Park and to have won there and to beat England on such an occasion in the manner we did."

The following morning McGurn organised a swim in the Forty Foot. After the French game, he had taken the squad to UCD for a game of basketball, a variation on an aqua-park in Blanchardstown, or a game of indoor soccer. This was meant to be a surprise, even to the players, but O'Sullivan had let it slip in an RTÉ radio interview and it went around by word of mouth.

"When we went past Dún Laoghaire they figured it out and I got a bit of abuse," says McGurn. "But once they jumped in they felt the better for it."

"I can't swim, so I wasn't going near the place," admits Leamy. "I just watched. It looked frightening to me anyway. It was freezing but I think it freshened up the boys a little bit."

About 15 seconds was enough for Stringer. Follow that? Without the raw emotion and sheer towering scale of last Saturday's occasion, without the Croker effect, without England as foes, it will be nigh impossible to repeat such a performance.

"It'll be different. We've got to be professional. Scotland will be very disappointed to have been beaten by Italy and they are great party poopers, as history has shown. It would be very disappointing not to put in a very big performance and get the win.

"There's a Triple Crown there to be won and it's important that we go out and win."

February 24th, 2007. It will take some topping, but this team intend topping it.

Horgan on that try

'I have to say it was one of the tries that made me happiest. The day, the occasion and the style of it'

Stringer on that pass

'Absolutely brutal . . . there was no power in it whatsoever. I don't know how we managed to score'

Leamy on the finish

'We would have been slapping ourselves on the back too much if we'd gone on to a lap of honour'