Robbie Henshaw leading the way in Ireland's attack

STRIVING TO IMPROVE: ‘I need to challenge myself how to play. With defences being so good lately, how do you impose yourself? How do you find gaps?’ asks Robbie Henshaw. Picture: Billy Stickland

There is no ‘I’ in team but there is a ‘me’ in #TeamOfUs. The hashtag, launched by Ireland’s shirt sponsors back in 2016, has stuck in many’s the craw but it chimed with the ethos of the team and of the time given Joe Schmidt’s reliance on collective buy-in. There were obvious stars in the ranks but it needed everyone following the same orbit.

The mind still spools back to open training sessions, at the RDS, or up in Newforge in Belfast, when the Kiwi would bark and harry as players drilled endlessly. So many of Ireland’s best scores were rehearsed a thousand times on the pitch in Carton House. The cliché about games being won far away from the madding crowds rarely rang so true.