This will never not be enjoyable. When the planet burns to ashes and the ice-caps melt into the oceans, watching Ireland beat England will still be great gas altogether. This was match 143 between the two countries and it was only Ireland’s 54th victory. England sit on 81 wins – there are decades to go before parity in the fixture is even a slim possibility.
So let’s have no pooh-poohing of the achievement here. Ignore the knowing bores who talk it down. Ireland sucked up everything England had to throw at them, played like drains themselves for most of the first half, and still had enough in hand to beat them out the gate. The last two England tries were annoying but no more than that. Once Ireland went ahead, defeat was never on the cards.
Steve Borthwick and Maro Itoje came in to meet the media afterwards wearing the familiar sort of faces we were used to seeing from Ireland coaches and captains in years gone by. Better still, they had to go through the age-old routine of finding positives, of talking up the effort. The kind of patter Irish rugby was fluent in for so many generations of this fixture.
“Huge congratulations to Ireland and respect to them for their performance,” said Borthwick. “Also, I’m very proud of our players for how they attacked the game in the first half and also for how they fought back in the final quarter and scored two tries to get us the bonus point.
“[England] certainly started the second half with a lot of energy and endeavour. And I think it’s right to acknowledge the defensive effort, which, while it was disappointing to concede tries, we were playing against a team that is one of the best attacking sides in the world. Our team has certainly improved defensively.”
Energy. Endeavour. Pride in the first-half aggression, pride in the bonus-point tries. For so long we came to these matches and heard this half-a-loaf stuff from vanquished Ireland teams after they’d been atomised by England. The shoe being on the other foot still feels a little weird. It might never not.
“We pretty much said that the first half was really good,” said Itoje when he was asked what message he gave his players afterwards. “And in the second half, we didn’t quite execute the game plan in terms of field position and territory. But I’m proud of the way the boys fought to the very end. We fought to get a losing bonus point at the end and that’s definitely admirable.
Dan Sheehan celebrates scoring Ireland’s fourth try with James Lowe and Josh van der Flier. Photograph: Dan Sheridan/Inpho
“It is what it is. I think our role is to learn from it and to build and get better. There were large parts of our game where I think we took a step forward today – the energy we had on the field, the vibrancy to our attack, the way the guys were attacking and flooding through holes I thought was very admirable. But of course there are things for us to learn and get better.”
After a while, some of the English press pack weren’t entirely buying the positive vibes. They weren’t quite as jazzed by the energy and the vibrancy and all the admirable fighting to the end that Itoje and Borthwick were talking up. One of them pointed out that England had won two of their last nine games, both of them against Japan. Is that good enough?
“I understand the question,” said Borthwick, on the back foot now. “But if people look at today’s game, they will see an Ireland team that has been together for such a long period of time, that has 1,200 caps. And we see an England team that is being built over the last six months and that has about half that amount of caps.
“And I think if you watched the start of the game, you wouldn’t see that difference between the two teams. You see an England team that wants to play aggressively, that wants to move the ball. And I think it’s a step forward in our attack. Now, we clearly want to win every game. We didn’t today and we’re disappointed by that.
“You’ve got to credit Ireland. Ireland are a world class team and have been world class for so long. That experience told in the third quarter where tactically they played really well. That allowed them to get scoreboard pressure and we couldn’t claw it back.
“They’ve got quality throughout their team. I was looking at the teams beforehand and they’ve got nearly as many caps on their bench as we’ve got in our 23. I was looking at it going, ‘This is going to be a great test for us’. Ultimately, we came up short. We came here to win this game. We didn’t and we’ll ensure now that we’re a better team next week.”
Best of all, nothing Borthwick said was wrong. England had a go, they did some good things in the first half but ultimately they just couldn’t live with Ireland as the game wore on. They came up against a side who had a glaring advantage off the bench, who expected to win and who, when they got their act together, did the needful.
None of this is new, exactly. But it will never feel old.