Ireland take fall that tends to follow the Slam

The battered champions will be wincing through their pain today at a pearl of wisdom first spoken by an Anglo-Irishman just before he won the world heavyweight title: “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

Bob Fitzsimmons, the seventh son of a father from Tyrone and a Cornish mother, is credited with coining the phrase on the eve of his fight against a taller, heavier opponent whose parents came from Ballinarobe in Mayo, ‘Gentleman’ Jim Corbett.