It was when God Save The Queen was finally sung in Croke Park that the history of the place came alive. Received in a dignified and generous silence by the home crowd before Saturday's match, and then warmly applauded, it focused the stranger's mind - after all the hundreds of thousands of words spilled on the subject in recent weeks - not merely on the oft-told legends of Bloody Sunday and Hill 16 but on the reality and the enduring legacy of a liberation struggle at best peripheral to many English minds.
It focused Irish minds, too, and none more profoundly than those of the 22 men lined up in green jerseys. "You always respect your opposition's anthem," the brilliant Gordon D'Arcy remarked afterwards. "So, great respect for God Save The Queen - and then, when our anthems came, they boomed it out. That's the proper way to do it. I can't imagine how the English must have felt."
A fortnight earlier, on rugby union's first visit to the headquarters of the Gaelic Athletic Association, it had been the Irish who were overwhelmed by the meaning of the occasion, dropping their guard in the last two minutes of the match against France and paying a heavy price. Not this time. Not against the English. The first half began and ended with choruses of The Fields of Athenry so stirring that the men in white must have realised this was not to be their day. Meanwhile the sole half-hearted attempt at Swing Low, Sweet Chariot faded dismally into the Dublin drizzle.
"We probably got too caught up in it two weeks ago," D'Arcy continued. "The ability to separate the occasion and the performance definitely showed through today. I think it made a lot of people very happy and very proud."
Going down to their fourth consecutive defeat at the hands of an Ireland team coached by Eddie O'Sullivan, England were poor on Saturday. The revival against Scotland now looks like an illusion and, only two matches into his tenure as head coach, Brian Ashton will be searching desperately for short-term solutions to England's problems in the pack, whose deficiencies meant their half-backs were playing the game on the back foot. But to dwell on England would be to deprive Ireland of the praise due for their refusal to succumb to a depression induced by that shattering defeat by France, and for the rediscovery of the sumptuous quality and the well-grooved teamwork that made them pre-tournament favourites.
On a cold and damp afternoon various forms of ceremonial and a couple of unscheduled delays had kept the players out on the pitch for fully 15 minutes by the time Joel Jutge started the match. Once again Ireland conceded an early penalty but this time they made an instant response and played with an authority that gave England only the tiniest glimmer of hope in the 15 minutes after half-time, when David Strettle scored his well-deserved try.
Other than that brief episode it looked like a mismatch. Up front the Irish were utterly superior, thanks not just to Paul O'Connell's mastery of the lineouts, so well controlled that they often resembled training exercises, but to the same player's generalship of a bunch of forwards who dominated their opponents in the tight and at the breakdown.
"We feel we can get the better of most packs in world rugby at the moment," Simon Easterby, Ireland's Harrogate-born flanker, said. "The backs need that from us because they're lethal finishers and we gave them some good ball tonight. We gave the French a head start but we didn't give England a chance to get into the game and it was always going to be difficult for them to come back from that. The whole day was fantastic - the history, the atmosphere. But when it came to starting the game, we focused on that. We started well and we followed it through."
The returning Brian O'Driscoll, whose calming presence had been missed against France, was able to watch Ronan O'Gara's boot chip away at the English resistance before the tries started coming from a threequarter line moving with beautiful assurance. As Shane Horgan, Denis Hickie and Girvan Dempsey attacked from all angles, their opponents became increasingly dishevelled. David Wallace's final try, from Shaun Perry's intercepted pass, confirmed the gulf between the sides.
"We felt as though we let ourselves down by not putting in an 80-minute performance against France," O'Driscoll said. "And we also felt that we needed to repay the GAA for letting us use their magnificent stadium by putting on a great performance."
The English media, he added, had contrived to damage their own cause through their exultant reaction to the nature of Ireland's defeat against France. "Being called chokers added to the motivation because we didn't feel we were anything of the sort. So that was an added element but it wasn't the whole thing. There was a huge amount of factors."
Ireland will need England or Scotland to defeat France if they are to be in with a chance of the championship but at least they know that their preparations for the World Cup are back on track. "We'll leave it for a couple of days now," O'Driscoll said, "but when we look back we'll know that we made some mistakes and that we've got things to work on. And as Eddie [O'Sullivan] always says, when you're not getting better, you're getting worse. Great teams are the ones that continue to build and we want to be one of those."
For England, O'Driscoll added, the special nature of the evening was always going to present a test. "And I think the occasion probably got to them a little bit. Ireland-England games in Dublin tend to be massive events and Croke Park added to that. The atmosphere was among the most memorable I've ever experienced. It will stick in my mind for a long time." And in England's, perhaps, for even longer.
