Now after the Twickenham turf has been watered by copious champagne and
the Alaister Campbell-style spinning is slowly subsiding we can take
stock of the season. Most of the teams were woeful most of the time.
Ireland struggled to put away Italy, bottled up Scotland but couldn't
score any points, overwhelmed a Welsh rabble but underwhelmed most
spectators and pulled off the biggest heist in England since Tonbridge.
We are left with a propping situation which is only equalled by
Australia, an inability to deal with restarts from either direction, an
unbalanced back-row, a one-dimensional scrum-half and a back line that
cannot align itself and wants to crab laterally towards the stands at
all costs. If anything we have not progressed, our continued success is
because everyone else has regressed.

The memories of yesterday are of the disputed tries and the post-match
celebrations. I will forgive Dickinson the touchline debacle, it was a
difficult call and he owes irish teams something. Leamy (best Irish
player on the pitch) controlled the ball far better than it appeared at
first and BOD may have been ahead of the kicker but then so was Fritz I
suspect for the winning French try. What was disturbing was that Horgan
was given a head start on Moody but was caught easily before the line.
Easterby's sending off confirmed my suspicion that the copious work he
does that goes unnoticed by us also goes unnoticed by the majority of
the opposition. The resulting sole score during this ten minute period,
JOC's indiscretion was courtesy of Whitehouse's usual standard of
referreeing "ball out - tackle situation" then "coming in from the
side".

The post-match celebrations were most memorable for the somewhat
strange sight of EOS wresting the salver from the team and spending a
protracted period waving it at the Irish supporters. It summed up what
I thought this campaign had been all about - the cementing of his
position and his personal vindication. Michael asked some time ago what
constituted success for Ireland, personally winning the triple crown
and defeating the English at Twickenham no longer do it for me. Yes, it
makes my life more enjoyable as I go to work with my England supporting
colleagues but as a concept it has more to do with life pre1990 than
2006. When the triple crown concept was born there were four teams and
it meant a grandslam. It continued to have some meaning in the true
amateur days when I started watching. What I would like is at least one
championship and a semifinal spot at the World Cup and that will
necessitate turning over one or more from France, England, SA,
Australia and New Zealand. We are probably no closer that goal than we
were when Gatland was in charge.

When Tomas and I amongst others seem hypercritical it is not because we
are curmudgeonly or intemperate, rather we fear that moderate success
attained by underachievement from the most talented squad in twenty
years and possibly fifty will be used, as previously, to paper over the
cracks and replace our red, white and blue (interestingly not green)
spectacles with a rosier hue. The performance of the A team is a major
cause for hope if not those of the underage teams. So if we all
celebrate now well and good but lets not engage in the Indo style of
criticism where individual player scores have 3 added to them because
we have pulled off a victory. A medium-sized fish in a big pond is
better than small but how much better to be big and this squad with two
to three additions have the ability to pull off consistent victories
against the big five and make it the big six. By the way I quite liked
the carved lump of coal that was produced by a welsh miner, it seemed
to sum up the true nature of the amateur triple crown when you could
have the crap beaten out of you by any one of a postman, missionary,
solicitor, doctor, optician, accountant or clergyman of any hue.

Andrew