How BOD exceeded great expectations

It being exactly two centuries since the birth of Charles Dickens tomorrow, you’ll forgive our leaning on the old master this morning.

Don’t worry, you won’t have to endure our particular version of the opening of A Tale Of Two Cities. Not yet, anyway.

We’ll spare you any tortured comparisons between the first sentences of Bleak House (“Michaelmas term lately over... As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth”) and the crowd surging along Baggot Street and environs around 2pm yesterday on the way to the Aviva, and Ireland going down, agonisingly late, to Wales in the Six Nations opener.