One year out: Irish rugby braced for its biggest season

In just under 12 months, Ireland's Rugby World Cup campaign will be up and running.

Friday marked exactly one year until Andy Farrell's side open up their account against Romania at Nouveau Stade de Bordeaux. The goal will be for it to last until the 28 October final at Stade de France.

Tonga, South Africa and Scotland will follow through September and into October, and should those games go according to plan, then either France or New Zealand await in the glass-ceiling game, the quarter-final, the end point in Ireland's previous World Cup marathons.

While we can't point to World Cup success, we can point to World Cup consistency. Of the nine previous editions, Ireland have seven quarter-final appearances. It's not a consistency we want to celebrate though.

A quarter-final was par for the course in 1987, 1991 and 1995, but after Ireland crawled back to relevance in 2003, walked with Triple Crowns in the mid-00s, and ran with a Six Nations Grand Slam in 2009, that last-eight benchmark no longer cuts it.

After being flattened in Japan in 2019, Andy Farrell has picked up the Irish squad and patched them together, to the point where they are - on the rankings at least - the best in the world. We've been down this road before.

With one URC, Champions Cup and international season to go, the next 12 months are braced to be the most important in the history of Irish rugby.

One year out from that previous World Cup, the Irish rugby landscape was broadly similar. A Six Nations Grand Slam was followed by a major Test series win in Australia, while Leinster's Pro14 and Champions Cup double ensured Ireland were dominating both the club and international scene. Within a few months Joe Schmidt's side toppled New Zealand, before sweeping the