REVENGE is in the air over Dublin today.
On the last day of last season's RBS Six Nations Championship, England were doing everything they could to make sure they sewed up the title. They threw everything into their final game in Rome, 52 points, seven tries; they could not have done anything more.
Then they went back to their hotel to watch Ireland play France and their dreams evaporated as the men in Green edged out a nervy 22-20 win, which was enough to clinch the title, level on points with England but 10 ahead on score difference despite having lost to England in the tournament.
"It was tough to take," admitted Chris Robshaw, the England captain then and now. "We wanted France to win, which would have made us win. It's never nice when it's out of your hands. You want to control it and be able to influence it.
"When you're sat there hundreds of miles apart you're pretty helpless. We all had a beer together after and said 'we've got to continue learning from this'. We are getting better but it's one thing getting better, you've got to be picking up that silverware.
"Silverware matters to everyone. As a player you want to be judged on what you've won. It's all well and good picking up caps and playing x amount of times for your country, which is incredible, but you want to win stuff."
Winning stuff is what today is all about. It is the same two teams, but with England having already won at Cardiff, the general consensus is that whoever triumphs in this one will be favourites for the title, with two rounds of matches still to go. Both have to play Scotland, England at Twickenham, Ireland at BT Murrayfield, but you would be hard pressed to find anyone in either camp who sees that as more than a minor hurdle.
The build up to the game has been dominated by health and safety issues with Mike Brown, the England full-back, failing to recover from concussion while Jamie Heaslip misses out for Ireland after getting a knee in the back from Pascal Pape, the French lock. There was also a fair amount of hot air being blown around on the subject of Ireland's use of the choke tackle to try to win turnovers.
The big issue for Ireland is that though they have won their opening two games they don't feel they have yet hit the form that took them to November wins over Australia and South Africa.
"It's a strange enough feeling," said flanker Peter O'Mahony. "We are obviously happy to get the wins, but I don't think we have been overly happy with the performances. We've had two very tough games and we've battled them out well, but I don't think we've been quite as happy with our execution and our attention to detail. On the flip side it gives us plenty to work on and plenty of things to look forward too and implement."
Both sides have settled squads, with England coach Stuart Lancaster having made only one voluntary change - Jack Nowell coming in for Jonny May on the wing - in the tournament. Both coaches have also had to make one enforced change with Alex Goode replacing Brown and Jordi Murphy coming in for Heaslip.
"We've made minimal changes as we felt the squad have performed well in the first two games," said Lancaster.
"Alex is in good form for Saracens and has been training well over the last few weeks, as has Jack, who is also playing well for Exeter. Both have been pushing hard for selection and I am sure will seize their chance against a high-quality Ireland side.
"It's going to be one of those games. They've got a fantastic record at the moment having won the last nine games [their last defeat was against England a year ago]. They're obviously well coached. You can see that by the way their maul is put together, their defensive system, attacking threat and kicking game. They're a very good team and they are playing great rugby.
"But we've beaten them the last three times, [although] that won't matter [because] it will be the best team on the day that will win."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article