What another cracking weekend of rugby we witnessed.
The big talking point has to be Wales’ unbelievable victory over England, a game that England, if they had any modicum of discipline, would have won by 15 points. But they didn’t, and no matter which player they lost through injury, no matter what adversity they faced, Wales just kept on coming back for more.
Dan Biggar was sensational and Wales are due massive praise, as are their coaching and conditioning staff for delivering a team that showed that belief and never-say-die attitude.
For England, the post-mortem will be long and hard in the media, but they need to move on pretty quickly or their World Cup will be over this weekend. It makes for fascinating viewing, but it would be hard to countenance the hosts not getting out of their pool.
We know that their game against Australia on Saturday will be defined by small things; in that sense sport can be cruel, but that is why we are drawn to it.
I mention the England-Wales game first as I was lucky enough to be at Twickenham for that clash, but even luckier to be at Wembley for Ireland versus Romania.
It’s hard to believe that at the moment Ireland are almost under the radar in terms of the RWC, especially when we played in front of a record RWC crowd and played so well.
Our two pool games so far have been straightforward and the one nagging problem I have is that we haven’t really been tested.
What you don’t want to happen is to get a sudden shock to the system in the form of a match like England-Wales or New Zealand-Argentina, and suddenly we are not able to get our levels to that required place and in one fell swoop we are out.
It won’t happen yet, though we face a gear change physically this week against Italy, but all you can do is beat what is put in front of you.
The pool we have - as has been widely documented - is brilliant for us, but like with everything there will always be issues with that, in terms of potentially being undercooked for the big games ahead.
Ireland’s back three shone against Romania
In terms of the game itself there were some notable performers, but none more so than the back three.
Competition for places is huge in the back three and Simon Zebo, Keith Earls and Tommy Bowe all needed to deliver - they all did so.
I don’t envy Joe Schmidt’s selection dilemmas, but they are great to have for any coach.
The one player who I think cannot be left out at this stage is Zebo: he did the simple things well; he made the hard things look effortless - his pass to Earls from over 20 yards was world class; and he was selfless for the team.
It’s a pity his try was disallowed because the skill to almost stay infield was incredible.
To me, Zebo provides the magic that may be the difference to winning games that are on a knife edge, but from Joe’s point of view Zebo is delivering for those around him too, which is crucial.
Ireland’s army of support was immense
The other thing to mention is the World Cup record 89,267 crowd. Wembley and London literally turned green, and I can just imagine the lift the players got as they looked out of their hotel windows at the Wembley Hilton - it must have been incredible.
I’ve never heard Ireland’s Call sung like it; we talk about England having home advantage, but London could be turned green in these coming weeks.
It was a day to feel incredibly proud to be Irish, while not forgetting that the margin for error is becoming smaller as we begin to approach knock-out rugby, when defeat brings no tomorrow.
