Don’t turn nose up at Triple Crown

WHAT a difference a win makes. The major disappointment of the loss to France — I can still feel it — the euphoria of the win against England, one extreme to the other — the life of a sportsman.

People tell me all the time how lucky I am, what a great lifestyle we have being paid to play the game we love, coming away for weeks to a luxury hotel like Killiney Castle, and it’s true. But there are downsides, and defeat is probably the worst. The loss against France was a huge blow and we all felt responsible, we all felt we’d let so many people down. Then there’s the lifestyle; you’re well looked after, and we appreciate it, but there’s only so much luxury living I can take. You’d like to be at home with your own family, on your own couch, in your own bed; instead you’re fighting with your roommate for the remote control — I’m with John Hayes for the last few weeks, hard going!

It’s harder for the lads with kids — John and Fiona had a child last year, it’s a lot tougher on him, not seeing his family. I’m okay, but I feel bad for Kate, my wife, at home on her own. You know it’s only for a short time, you’ve got to make the most of it; you feel sometimes you’d love to be at home, the travelling is tough, but then you have days like England, and it makes it all worthwhile. The England game? Everyone was hyped up for days afterwards. The day itself was unbelievable; the highlight – for me anyway — was the national anthem, the emotion that was shown by everybody. The crowd especially, they were fantastic, a very proud day to be Irish. We were on show right across the world, and there was all this hullabaloo about the reception the English anthem might get. I never had any doubt that there was going to be respect shown, and there was, but then the way our anthem was belted out was just magnificent. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a version quite like that before.

I wasn’t one of the fellas shedding a few tears but a few of the lads have been getting a bit emotional before games anyway, so it wasn’t anything new — I know it has happened to John a few times. There are days that really get to fellas, but that day... unbelievable. I know Jerry Flannery didn’t want to sing the anthem, he was afraid he’d get too emotional. For me, I love belting out Amhráin na BhFiann, I love being able to sing it. You take a breath every so often, and then you really notice the noise; I stopped once or twice just to hear the crowd going at it, unbelievable.

Ireland’s Call got a great airing as well; it gets a lot of criticism, but I like it, I think it’s a great song. The words are good, very appropriate for the Irish rugby team, every province is represented in a very positive way. You’re never going to please everyone, but I hope it’s going to be there for a long time to come.

Even afterwards, when we drove down through O’Connell Street on the way to the Shelbourne Hotel, the scenes there — people out on the street, waving at the bus. It was an unreal kind of night, an atmosphere that no rugby team has experienced in Dublin for quite some time. Something to savour, something I’ll always remember.

We got a few days off again, and it was great to get home, back to Castleconnell, just across the Shannon from Clonlara. Everybody seemed to have a different experience of the day, depending on where they were, what was going on around them, and it’s great to hear their stories, get a feel of the whole experience. And of course it was great to be able to relax at last — we got a win in Croke Park.

It wasn’t very enjoyable in the weeks leading up to it — you’re not eating properly, you’re not sleeping properly, the nerves are unbelievable. When you have that bit of downtime, you can look back on it and think, yeah, that was a great day, I really enjoyed it, swap the stories.

Then came the cold light of day, the morning you wake up and realise, you’ve actually won nothing yet. You’re back into camp, moving on now to a very difficult assignment away from home. The Scots are coming off a very disappointing day for them, probably as disappointed with their performance as we’re happy with ours, and they’ll want to atone for that. We’re under no illusions, it’s going to be a very tough day up there. They’ll fancy themselves against us. We’re going for another Triple Crown, our third in four years; people tell us we should be looking beyond that, and we are, but France have messed up the Grand Slam for us this year. Now we’re left with the Triple Crown and I don’t think any Irish sportsperson can turn up their noses at a bit of silverware; certainly I don’t think we’re in any position to do it, the history we’ve had. I think it’s important that everyone should realise the enormity of this; the Triple Crown is still very difficult to win.

Beyond that, if results go our way and someone can beat France, we’re still in with a chance of the championship, and that can’t be overlooked either. We’ve reviewed our performance against England, picked out the mistakes, a few times where we should have scored but didn’t. From the final score, you’d say we didn’t miss much, everything was perfect, but far from it and it was important for us as a group that this was highlighted. That gives you a focus again for the Scottish game, you realise you have to be even more clinical at this level, take every opportunity as it arises, not let the opposition back in when you’re on top. When England got it back to 26-13 there was a bit of worry for a while; we realise we need to be far more ruthless in those areas.

A lot of people underestimate Scotland, but I’ve had experiences with them all the way up along the age groups, then at A level and senior level, and they’re always very physical in the pack, love to get stuck in. Their backs are to the wall now, they’re going to come out fighting and we expect that. It’s going to be a tough battle up front, they gave Wales a right doing, but will have been disappointed against England, again against Italy, especially the way they started. There’s going to be a backlash, it’s up to us to try and quell that.

One bad day in this Six Nations is already too much, we don’t want to experience another.

This column was penned in advance of Horan’s withdrawal from the Irish team last night.