A historic day for Ireland…..
February 24th 2007, the English national anthem played in Croke Park and the most significant game in the Irish rugby calendar was played. I honestly believe that a lot of Irish people would prefer to beat England than win the 6 Nations outright (assuming mutual exclusivity – both would be gravy). This year, with the venue and the historical significance that number probably increased to something approaching 100% of Irish people – even those that don’t care about rugby.
I’m not usually one to gloat but it was just so important to win – no one cared about getting up early to get good seats to watch in Fado’s, in fact we were early and the people that usually do the seat grabbing were beaten in by us. Anyone that knows Jen, Brian and myself would be suitably impressed.
And win they did – it was described by one person as the most impressive display of controlled rage he had ever seen. Ireland blew England out of the water – they had never conceded more than 40 points in the 6 Nations. At times in this game you thought 50 was a reasonable goal, though the final tally of 43 was beyond my wildest expectations at the start of the game.
This is the game that secures the recent team in Irish sporting folklore, assuming the Triple Crown last year was not enough – no one is going to forget this game. I even got a shot if when I realised we were actually going to win…
Shane Horgan is some sort of try scoring colossus, Ronan O’Gara didn’t miss a kick and BOD was his usual brilliant self. Paul O’Connell and David Wallace seemed to be all over the place and I honestly can’t remember anyone having a bad game. Not even the great Jonny Wilkinson could derail the fairy tale. Hopefully they can carry this form through and someone will do us a favour against the French so we can finally win the thing outright – ironically that could mean cheering for England when they play France…..
Though if they finish the season this strongly against Scotland and Italy (regardless of France winning) they will probably have to deal with insanely high expectations in the World Cup. Don’t get me wrong – if we played in Croke Park and every other team that came to the ground caused as much of a reaction I could see us winning it, and I can even see Ireland getting as far as the semi-final. I just can’t see them winning it, at least not in my head – I’ll be there hoping along with everyone else that this is our year 
The rest of the pictures are up on Flickr as always – the picture backlog seems to have been cleared up for now………and hopefully this helps explain why there were so many drunken Irishmen about on Saturday – it was not just a warm up for March 10th and 17th.
Technorati Tags: Rugby, Ireland, England, Pictures, Fados, 6 Nations, Washington DC