Hi °C | Lo °C AN expectant nation, but this time the Irish rugby team could not deliver.
Not for the first time in recent weeks, we were looking for one thing, but were served up something entirely less palatable.
And so the English win on our turf in a Six Nations game for the first time in a decade, demolishing our dreams of a Grand Slam.
And it had all been going so, so well – at least before the game started.
With news filtering through that talisman Brian O'Driscoll had been present at the birth of his first child earlier but, crucially, was still available to play – and had managed to get a full night's sleep – the omens looked very good indeed.
Rumours that Amy would belt out the national anthem never came to fruition.
But Brian was the first on to the pitch for the warm-up, understandably with a huge grin on his face.
We made a couple of jokes about the lengths he would go to avoid changing Sadie's first nappy, rechristened him 'The Bodfather', had a pint to wet the little one's head, and settled in to watch Old Blighty put to the sword.
Except it never happened.
"If it was boxing, you would say we never laid a glove on them," Peter Fahy of Ballinasloe offered with a shrug afterwards.
In the run-up to this game, a former Ireland international told fans the most important thing to bring to Lansdowne Road was "a stopwatch".
This, he advised, would allow you to "count the time England's recycle takes and if it is consistently below five seconds, Ireland will lose".
Perhaps Brian and Amy had use for the stopwatch as they fitted a birth between her appearance at the IFTAs on Saturday night and his game, but arguably a better bet for the rest of us was a pair of ear muffs.
They help keep you warm, but more importantly allow you to block out the incessant jargon that spews out of many international rugby analysts and supporters like freshly agitated slurry from a spreader.
In the Clyde Court Hotel before kick-off, for example, it was all about "the battle of the breakdown" and the "game of margins".
But there are still some fans intent on, ahem, running straighter lines.
"Brutal performance so far. They do know it's England? Where is the anger?" asked Ciara Flannery from Thomastown in Kilkenny.
"Beating England at anything is great – but beating them at something when they think they're better than us would be just bliss. Especially from here."
"Here" was half-time, with Ireland 0-6 behind, and with stars Zebo and Sexton both off injured.
Gloomy
It wasn't only the weather that was decidedly gloomy, after a first-half littered with handling errors from the home side.
As the wags had it, Brian might want to think twice before letting some of his teammates hold little Sadie.
As it happens, the second-half performance was better, but Ireland ran out of ideas and now we all have the blues, baby or otherwise.
As yesterday's events showed, rugby's not a matter of life and death – it just feels that way sometimes.
Especially with England involved.
Irish Independent
