Confined to quarters: Can Ireland put an end to a modern obsession?

On the eve of another Rugby World Cup, Irish fans are again perched anxiously between optimism and foreboding.

For the second installment in a row, Ireland enter as World no. 1. In 2019, this was regarded as some strange quirk of the data and generally treated with derision. The team's form had visibly curdled since their high of 2018 and they were a sorry shadow of themselves by the end of the competition.

In 2023, their claims to being legitimate number one are on surer ground, even if many will await ultimate proof of that in the next couple of months. They've occupied that spot since completing a Test series win in New Zealand 14 months ago and have only won and won since then.

There has been enough bellyaching about the infamous draw at this point. It appears that they're not going to change it now, at any rate - no matter how many times a s**t-hot outfit from Side A of said draw pulverises one of the shrivelled husks that currently populate Side B of the draw. It is a sorry state of affairs.

The Irish rugby fraternity isn't so short of solicitors that a legal case for a redraw couldn't have been taken to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The mind boggles that there wasn't a Hennessy Coghlan O'Hara figure out there who could have done a Gina Miller on it and overturned this miscarriage of justice.

One question that could be asked of the organisers is, if they're going to perform a seeded draw that early, why stop at one tournament? They may as well have gotten the 2027 and even 2031 draws out of the way there and then to save time. The seedings, after all, could hardly be any more out of whack than they've turned out to be for the 2023 edition.

The Welsh fans on social media [always a representative strata of any