Kieran Shannon: Wales fight ignominy as Ireland close in on back-to-back Triple Crowns

Ireland by a distance have won more Triple Crowns this millennium than anyone else. That they came so regularly has not always been the case

All signs point towards Ireland beating Wales on Friday night and then facing Scotland with back-to-back Triple Crown wins on the line. Pic: Ben McShane/Sportsfile

Growing up in Ireland in the 1980s and '90s following the national rugby team, you quickly became familiar with a couple of terms distinctive to the sport that younger generations of Irish supporters wouldn’t either be as au fait with or put as much stock in but their Welsh contemporaries would: the Wooden Spoon and the Triple Crown.

Even to this day I can remember exactly where I was when Ollie Campbell put on that kicking exhibition against the Scots in ’82 (in the neighbours’ front room) and Michael Kiernan landed that drop-goal at Lansdowne Road in ’85 (in a car with the radio on making the crosstown journey back from playing an underage football game): they were so glorious because they were such a contrast to the bleakness of the years either side of them.