There’s an i in ‘Simon’, but none in ‘team’

The ‘Cult of Joe’ that has fastened itself around the team and its coach is no bad thing, writes Brendan O’Brien.

It has armed Ireland with an extra layer of respect and added an air of something close to mystique.

There was a time — and it doesn’t seem like all that long ago — that you would routinely hear mention of players whose training habits left more than a little to be desired, but whose performances on the pitch come the weekend almost always seemed to make up for such obvious shortcomings. Coaches or teammates would chuckle when talking about these individualists, like a loving father indulgent of a slightly errant child whose indiscretions wouldn’t have been countenanced by another without the same abundance of talent. Team-mates may have chaffed at the fact that some were more equal than others, but they knew that genius merited such perks.