If you can't escape the hype, then you better embrace it.
Bubbling just beneath the surface of the 2023 Six Nations championship has been the niggling feeling that if Ireland played to par, then they’d find themselves exactly where they have found themselves: three shots up coming down the last.
"I think enjoy it, it's something special," was hooker Cian Healy’s message for Irish fans after yesterday’s 22-7 win over the Scotland, just the second time in the last nine meetings that there’s been more than a score between the sides at Murrayfield.
"It's an opportunity to do something very special at home, St Patrick's weekend.
"It's a good buzz of a weekend anyway and if we can add to that, if we can add to what goes on at home and for people abroad that might watch it, if you make everyone feel a part of something special then you've done your job.
"You've made people happy and something people will remember."
Ireland won the Five Nations championship in Dublin in 1985 and claimed their first every Grand Slam, in 1948, in Belfast.
Their four Six Nations victories, 2009, 2014, 2015 and 2018, all came with final day victories on foreign soil, namely Cardiff, Paris, Edinburgh and London.
This time, if Andy Farrell’s charges, 15-point favourites on this Monday morning, can beat England, they’ll get to lift the crown at home, maybe even, we can hope, with the strains of Molly Malone ringing in their ears.
They’ll play it down, of course, during this week’s media briefings, which, starting with an injury update this afternoon that won’t make for pleasant reading, will contain all the usual cliches aimed at dampening down the expectations of the fans.
"It would be the stuff of dreams really," conceded Johnny Sexton after the game.
"What you
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