A ll right, I understand rugby's offside laws like I do the Tokyo telephone exchange, and my mastery of the mysteries of front-row play equals my fluency in Zulu.

That said, let's all agree that Europe was riveted by Saturday's match. London is to dedicate some bells to the scorer of Ireland's second try, and the Royal College of Physicians is to rename a body part after the Irish manager.

The German Chancellor Herr Bismarck has awarded Brian O'Driscoll the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, with Diamonds and Oak-Leaf Clusters, while General Franco is appointing him a Caballero of the Grand Order of St Sebastian. Even Burma has been impressed, and is releasing a thousand political prisoners to celebrate Ireland's world-famous victory.

Though on second thoughts, perhaps not.

For what has driven almost the entire population of Ireland ecstatic beyond words has utterly escaped the attention of everyone else.

Even if you asked an average Englishman or Frenchman, with a reasonable interest in rugby, which team won this year's rugby Grand Slam, they might possibly know today, (though I doubt it, for their countries notoriously take an interest only in their own sporting achievements) but they certainly won't by next Saturday.

And the rest of Europe has never heard of the Six Nations Championship, the rugby-playing countries' equivalent of the Nordic Cross-Country Skiing & Smallbore Trapshooting Contest, that annually has the populations of Scandinavia and Finland -- with all those lovely Nielsens and Nylands -- chewing their chairs in a frenzy of patriotic excitement, convinced the world is watching, agog.

It isn't. There's only a handful of sporting competitions which are of global significance: soccer, of course, plus a couple of Olympic titles -- the men's 1500 and 5000 metres, and even then their winners are world-famous for but a week.

For these events are always won by drugs-free African athletes who, despite their honesty, don't register on our psyches.

The 100 metres, usually won by drug-fuelled North American descendants of slaves, hasn't been honest since before the Munich crisis.

And of Irish swimmers, I say naught.

So, keeping matters thus in perspective, we might also consider just what happened on Saturday: an Irish team that once again was subconsciously determined to lose was rescued from defeat by the greatest Irish sportsmen alive; the four Os -- O'Driscoll, O'Gara and O'Connell, and their divine associate, O Salutaris. They chose to reject the script that the collective subconscious of some team-mates had begun to write from the very kick-off.

The opening words of this secret death-wish were penned within the first minute when Donncha O'Callaghan started an idiotic off-the-ball incident with a Welsh player. He was warned: any more such hanky-panky, my boy, and you're off.

Midway through the second half, he got involved in more stupidity. But the referee, no doubt daunted by the consequences of a dismissal in the crunch match of the season, kept his yellow card in his pocket.

Nonetheless, the penalty awarded put Wales just a point behind. Minutes later, more subconscious-engendered stupidity, and they were ahead.

Indeed, the ludicrous penalty count throughout the match -- 15-6 against Ireland -- suggests that the Irish self-defeating mentality of old lived on in some players. They knew the referee's severe attitude to holding on to the ball after a tackle, yet nonetheless violated repeatedly. That it didn't lead to disaster was solely because of O'Connell's total dominance of the line-outs resulting from those Welsh penalties. No Irish forward has so completely ruled from the throw-in -- well, not since the day that, owing to a slight confusion in sporting and episcopal fixture-lists, Willie John McBride led Ballymena 1st XV to victory over a party of First-Communicants from Glenarm Infants' School.

And as for Brian O'Driscoll: he is simply the greatest ever Irish footballer, in any code. True greatness is not just about bravura performances for a handful of seasons, such as George Best showed, but throughout an entire playing career.

It is only possible when a unique skill is combined with an equally unique emotional maturity, and all governed by an unswerving personal integrity. Brian O'Driscoll embodies these heroic virtues (whereas Best only ever thought that "honour" preceded "back").

The final hallmark of a truly great player is that even when the opposition knows he is lethal, and unleashes football's equivalent of Soviet-style tank warfare against him, he triumphs regardless.

Two of Brian's tries in this championship, in which he burrowed through the massed armour of the opposing forwards to get a touch-down, are almost without precedent for a centre at international level.

And something else: great players tend also to be gentlemen. Brian O'Driscoll therefore qualifies on all counts.

Nonetheless, at the end, Ireland were blessed with extraordinary luck.

If the usually wonderful Stephen Jones had not in the final minute kicked directly into touch, Ireland would never have been close enough to the Welsh line for Ronan O'Gara's drop-goal.

Yet tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon: even on Saturday, almost no-one else in the entire world gave a damn. So let us all now proceed with the rest of our lives.