Rugby: England deserve all the plaudits

BEFORE we go any further here, congratulations are in order. If Ireland had won the rugby World Cup, England and the English would have been delighted for us.

For the life of me, I can't understand why that feeling isn't generally reciprocated.

I mean, does anyone in rugby remember that year in the early '70s when the Welsh and the Scots, our Celtic cousins, our kindred spirits, disgracefully refused to come to Dublin in a year when we had every chance of winning that rarest of gems in our sporting history, the rugby Grand Slam?