Ireland v France can live up to hype and seize rugby back from stattos

Sport was a joyous business for the great Frank Keating: let’s hope for an uplifting Dublin classic in his memory.

‘In an age of played-for midfield collisions and narrow-eyed and relentlessly grinding body charges by over-muscled half-robots, O’Driscoll shines out like the full-beam Fastnet light does off the Cork coast,’ Frank Keating wrote after Brian O’Driscoll’s Paris hat-trick for Ireland in 2000. Pic: Ray Lohan/Sportsfile

Sporting miracles do occasionally happen. And when they do the vivid memories cascade down for years and years. Think of dramatic Six Nations games between Ireland and France, say, and it is impossible not to be mentally transported back a quarter of a century. Baggy cotton jerseys, Irish underdogs and – magnifique! – a young Brian O’Driscoll scoring a hat-trick in Paris to beat France 27-25.

Not only was it Ireland’s first win in Paris for 28 years but that evocative mid-March weekend sticks out for a different reason. It also proved to be the final overseas rugby assignment for one of the great oval-ball chroniclers, the Guardian’s Frank Keating.