Walking tightrope of newfound swagger and old quarter-final baggage

It's all been building up to this. World Cup quarter-final day, Irish rugby's carnival of horrors.

It began back in 1987, when the Rugby World Cup was still a novel enterprise of questionable prestige. Doyler, the hero of the '85 Triple Crown, returned home from our inaugural World Cup quarter-final defeat, crowing that we had "won the second half".

We've won a few more second halves since then, though the pedants in World Rugby never let us through to the semi-final on the strength of this. Four years ago, in one of the most harrowing World Cups outside of '07, we could only win the last 15 minutes. No one was inclined to boast about this then, least of all the pallid and shaken-looking players.

'Bottling' is a loaded term in sport and generally the preserve of bar-room slagging. However, Ireland's 2019 World Cup woes were attributed to "performance anxiety", which the layman will understand as 'bottling.'

Amazingly, the last time Ireland even led a World Cup quarter-final was just before half-time in 1995, back in the era when they were happy to just get that far. France, as anticipated ran away with it in the second half, the game concluding with Mr Ntamack Snr scampering away for an intercept try while Brendan Mullin, in the final act of his international career, gave hopeless chase.

It's a big day for the rugby diehards for obvious reasons. And it's a big day for the haters. Should Ireland lose to New Zealand tonight, the latter will get four more years dismissing any and every rugby triumph by referring back to this failure when it really, actually mattered.

We could even expect a boisterous chant of 'FOUR MORE YEARS' emanating from a recalcitrant corner of the pub.

Four Grand Slams on the trot would make no odds,