Let’s hail our heroes, their day will come

THE smaller question coming into this Grand Slam decider in Dublin yesterday was straightforward — which popular people’s anthem would prevail? Would it be Athenry or Sweet Chariots — sung by the way with almost equal volume as thousands of English managed to secure those gold-plated black-market tickets?

In the event, well, no need to elaborate. Long before the final whistle the good-humoured visiting hordes were in full voice and more power to them. Having denied England two years ago when we had nothing but pride going for ourselves, to begrudge them their celebrations yesterday would be small, narrow and petty.

So congratulations England, enjoy, because you earned this the hard way, the gutsy way.

The second question though for the Irish faithful in Lansdowne was this old Ireland or new Ireland? Same old bitterly disappointing story, or dawn of a new and glorious era?

The answer to that is a little more complex. Coming into this game as an Irish rugby fan, how should you feel? Should you look to all the powerful, positive things done by Irish sports people over the years, from the footballing genius of Best, the revolutionary snooker cue-master Alex Higgins, to the growing current presence in world golf of Padraig Harrington and Darren Clarke, two of the only men to go down the stretch with Tiger Woods, head-to-head with the virtually-unbeatable, and prevail?

Or, would all those dark, dismal, depressing defeats of yore lead to that familiar air of foreboding, the big-day failures like the two Eamonn Coughlan Olympic fourth places, the Sonia slip-ups, even that loss to the Scots two years ago that prevented what would have been a Grand Slam year for us then?

The answer to that depends on which Ireland you come from. If it's the new Ireland of Beemers, Mercs, of euro and Europeans, probably the former. But if you're of the era of the Morris Minor, of turf fires and tough times, you came into this game expecting nothing more than you got 42-6, grand-slammed, your bubble burst.

Those Irish were there yesterday in strength, stayed to the bitter end because we always do, but left with heavy heart, spirit broken, downed again. But there are the others, and they too could be heard. And what they saw was encouraging, uplifting.

The old Irish looked at the four wins to date in this Six Nations championship, looked at the autumn wins against Australia and Argentina, and thought, false dawn.

They're the same people who look at these sunny spring days and think bad sign, bad summer now surely.

The new Irish looked on those earlier wins as they look on these blessed days, and think, wow. This is great, this is super, milk it, enjoy it while it lasts.

They look on yesterday in the way coach Eddie O'Sullivan looked at it, glass half full. Called his players in a circle at game's end à la Munster after their two European Cup final losses and told them, 'lads, brilliant'.

"I said we had to be disappointed, but I wanted them to hold their heads up, their chests out, because of the performance they gave. They gave everything they had on that field for the whole 90 minutes (that included injury time), never stopped trying to score.

"They have trained hard all year, today would have been the icing on the cake for us, nice icing. But I wanted them to feel proud of themselves because I couldn't ask more of them than what they gave out there."

That's the new Ireland, the one we should all be part of. Yes England won their Grand Slam yesterday but it didn't come easy.

"You should see the state of bodies in there," coach Clive Woodward invited, and on every English body the bruises were there. Five of them replaced temporarily at various stages, battered, bloodied, bruised. And still they prevailed, English leonine courage.

So hail the conquerors, the phenomenal Jonny Wilkinson, perhaps the single biggest difference between the sides; hail the mighty Dallaglio, hail even captain Martin Johnson, not a backward step in his armoury not even for the President.

But hail even more our own heroes. Beaten but dammit all, unbowed. Our day will come. Surely.