A future united Ireland is as much at stake as today’s rugby clash

“A CROWD of us were going along the Shepherd’s Bush Road when out of a lane came a chap with a donkey — just the sort of donkey and just the sort of cart they have at home,” Michael Collins recalled. “He came out quite suddenly and abruptly and we all cheered him. Nobody who has not been in exile will understand me, but I stand for that.”

In his book, An Irish Voice, Gerry Adams wrote: “It’s funny, the things that remind you of home and make you homesick, that let you know you’re an exile.”

He was describing his first trip to the US, where he met so many homesick people from Ireland that he became homesick himself.” And he was only allowed into the US for 48 hours that time. If you understand what they were saying, then you can understand the fervour with which the crowd at the Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey sang the Irish national anthem at the World Cup game against Italy in 1994. Some of the players later said it was the most moving experience of their lives.