Let's be positive now. England may be on the verge of a world record run of international wins, on the precipice of the 2nd consecutive Grand Slam, and may have made utter fools of a Scotland team we had convinced ourselves were for real, but we stopped the world record at 18 already this season, and there are plenty of times England been trimmed in Dublin in the past.
Everyone remembers 2007, but Ireland have blown England out of the water on three other occasions in the last 30 years.
1987: Ireland 17 - 0 England
England were pure useless in 1987 and Ireland had only recently won the Five Nations but a scoreline like this was still a nice surprise.
Tries from Michael Kiernan (the English defence made an absolute hames of it), Phillip Matthews and Keith Crossan and England were humiliated.
'87 ended up being the last year the English got a whack of the wooden spoon (sadly that is not true for us) while Ireland ended up finishing second on points difference after winning in Cardiff. France took home the Grand Slam.
1993 - Ireland 17 - 3 England
1987 was the first time Stuart Barnes ever played against Ireland (see above). Conservative England coaches preferred the dour Rob Andrew to the adventurous Barnes in the intervening years. But after England's shock loss to Wales in 1993, Andrew was dumped and Barnes gave an explosive, brilliant display against Scotland at Twickenham. It was rather different in Dublin. After this beating, he was never to play in an English shirt again.
This was the most unexpected hammering of them all. The previous year England had sauntered to the Grand Slam while Ireland took a licking in every game.
1993 was a victory for the converted Gaelic footballer brigade with former Galway inter-county player Eric Elwood landing three penalties and a drop goal and Mick Galwey going over in the corner to seal it.
Ireland also beat Wales in Cardiff that year making it two wins in the Championship. Thus, by the standards of that decade it was a sensational year.
Note: Calling this a 'hammering' might be pushing it but lookit...
2007 - Ireland 43 - 13 England
So, no one has forgotten this one then. It's worth remembering that there was some rugby played after the anthems that day (some historical style look-backs nearly forget that) and what rugby...
2011 - Ireland 24 - 8 England
Having recorded their promotional video with Nike declaring themselves Grand Slam champions, the most average England team ever to win the Six Nations jetted off to Ireland to complete their first clean sweep in eight years. You would think, given their history of blowing Grand Slams on the last day (1990, 1999, 2000, and right here in 2001) they would have been more circumspect.
After about 20 minutes, it became apparent that their pre-match hubris was terribly misplaced. The scoreline ended up being deeply flattering to England.
Naturally some public spirited individual at Nike leaked the video shortly afterwards. Much appreciated.
