The rain came and it was good. Gone was the suffocating humidity that had tortured every pore inside the enclosed Kobe Misaki Stadium for the first two World Cup games here.

There is no talk of winning or losing in the Irish or the Russian camps this week. Nobody doubts which way the result will fall when they meet in Kobe tomorrow. This game will be about so much more than the numbers beside each nation’s name at the final whistle.