Pressure from within

STRIKING a balance is the real challenge facing the Irish players on Sunday as rugby makes its debut in Croke Park.

All the hype and expectation and pressure that comes with this historic event can be used positively, can be used as inspiration; equally, it can overwhelm, overpower, it can paralyse. Striking the balance, that’s what the players will be trying to do, that’s what Gordon D’Arcy will be doing.

Unfortunately, there are among us those for whom talk of 1916, of 1921, of Black-and-Tans and Bloody Sundays in Croke Park, is still current, those for whom Croke Park is sacred soil, drenched in the blood of martyrs, those to whom rugby and soccer are anathema, games of the foreigners who spilled that blood.