My rugby career is a game of two halves: bad player and ardent fan

IT wasn’t a funereal atmosphere on the ferry on Sunday, but it was sad and solemn. 

I’ve read reports of booze-fuelled riots on trips like these, but there was no danger of that. Just much nodding and sighing as you passed one another, an unspoken acceptance that this year had passed us by.

It was all about the match. Thousands of us had travelled in hope, and thousands of us had come home in a sort of despairing resignation. Joe Schmidt had a plan, and it was going to guarantee the Grand Slam. The plan had reckoned without the most extraordinary resilience I’ve ever seen from a Welsh defence (and a few of our own set-pieces going astray).