Past woes still echo as unpredictable England arrive in town

Ireland and England's latest meeting, 150 years after their first, comes freighted with greater than average levels of uncertainty.

Viewed from this side of the water, the game has not appeared to be in rude health in England of late.

For a time there in 2022/2023, it began to look like they'd have no more clubs left, with historic entities like Wasps and London Irish going to the wall.

Most of the longstanding internationals, meanwhile, still seem to be working through their trauma from the Eddie Jones years, occasionally releasing a tell-all autobiography in which they detail what life was like inside the reign of terror. Some of them give the distinct impression they'll never be fully right again.

The portrait to emerge was that Eddie's caustic approach to man-management made Malcolm Tucker look like Mr Barrowclough from Porridge.

Between 2021 and 2023, they won six of 15 Six Nations matches, finishing fourth twice and fifth once, as poor a record as they've endured since the early 1970s.

Despite it all, they still got further than Ireland in the 2023 World Cup, a slightly comical turn of events which might have been funnier had our boys not been the butt of the joke.

Without raking over old sorrows, the draw couldn't have been kinder to England had it been conducted in secret in the Pall Mall Restaurant by Bill Beaumont and Clive Woodward.

Under's Jones' pointedly humble successor Steve Borthwick, England had adopted a parodically conservative gameplan, which reached its zenith in the World Cup semi-final when they almost toppled South Africa in miserable weather conditions. The match was a perversely compelling festival of caterpillar rucks and box-kicks, both sides treating possession as something to be rid of as soon as