In these new testing times for Anglo-Irish relations, our people are perhaps even more sensitive than usual to any hint of what they might deem English arrogance.
Saracens and England lock Maro Itoje fell foul of the denizens of the RTÉ.ie comments section - and no finer people reside on the planet - for his comments at the beginning of the week about how England must beat Ireland in Dublin.
The backlash seemed a bit harsh on old Maro, who was careful to stress that Ireland have been the best team in the northern hemisphere for the past year and a bit. (Though he couldn't reasonably argue any different on that score.)
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It seemed to be his statement that "England should be the number one team" that rankled but it's probable this was based on nothing more than a totting up of the registered players in each of the competing nations.
There seems to be a school of thought in England - endorsed by Eddie Jones - that one starts from the default position that England will win the Six Nations unless they're blown off course by some unforeseen event or dramatic loss of form.
Itoje's comments suggested that here was a bruised and uncertain outfit trying to recover their 'rightful' place in the pecking order.
It doesn't take much of an imaginative leap to picture England players in the dressing room geeing each other up by ritually pounding each other in the chest and reminding themselves - and everybody else while they're at it - of their history and traditional status within the game.
They wouldn't be the first team to indulge in this form of psychology. Donal Óg Cusack spent the pre-match parade at the 1999 Munster final hollering 'We are Cork!' at bemused Clare players who, at that time, had never known anything but victories over Cork.
Rocked by their fifth placed finish last year - their worst performance since 1987 - England may be trying to summon their God-Monster voice. They might well seek get back in touch with their familiar domineering snarl in Lansdowne Road tomorrow.
England committed themselves to a course of humility during the Stuart Lancaster/Andy Farrell era. This was entirely prompted by their chastening experience at the 2011 World Cup, which was presented in the press as a stag party at which they were obliged to play a few rugby matches.
This delivered a modest degree of success and a clear improvement in performance. But Lancaster's England had some sort of curse upon them and the Grand Slam somehow kept eluding the team, whether through a final day implosion against Wales or a freakish bounce of the ball in the last minute in Paris. And any positive vibes from the era were obliterated by the grisly ending at the 2015 World Cup and Lancaster briefly became unemployable in his own land.
Eddie Jones reversed this approach entirely and proceeded to win 17 games on the trot, in the process restoring the perception that England are at their most potent when they embrace the old proud, domineering pose. When they beat their chest and put on their best Thor impression.
Press commentary on the Croke Park years are a case in point. The Welsh, but Anglophilic, rugby journalist Stephen Jones implied that England's meek and politically sensitive attitude contributed to their pasting in 2007. Two years later, he recommended a more blunt and indifferent approach.
"Two years ago, England had to pussyfoot around Croke Park for fear of offending the sensibilities of those who saw the place as a political shrine instead of a sports stadium. England were thrashed. On Saturday they have to dismantle the whole place."
One can get an idea what Jones was evoking here. He obviously wasn't demanding they dismantle the place in the Combat 18 sense of the phrase.
Those LSE (London School of Economic) pinkos, those Guardian opinion columnists, the kind of people who go around telling them they need to feel guilty about the empire, had sapped all their mojo in the lead-up and the result was England took an almighty shoeing.
By 2009, they needed to dial down the sensitivity-meter (or preferably chuck it out altogether) and instead adopt the forceful attitude of an English tourist loudly demanding chips on a foreign holiday.
Instead of earnestly sitting through Tim Pat Coogan style readings of Irish history from Irish sportsmen who'd made it in England, they'd imbibe the spirit of some of the great conquering heroes of English history - Horatio Nelson, Oliver Cromwell, Martin Johnson.
Never mind the generals, it was 'Johnno's' performance on the red carpet that remains the gold standard for English bloody-mindedness abroad. Watching him out there, sneering and stomping around, telling the flustered official to get lost, contemptuously spitting out water five feet into the distance, it was easy to see how those guys built an empire.
The great fear this weekend is that a member of the ERG (European Research Group) might catch sight of this famed episode on some montage or other and demand that Johnson is given a place on the Brexit negotiating team. The backstop might not last long.
The England team of 2003 were a brilliant side and considerably better than Ireland but 42-6 in Dublin was still a hell of a statement in a Grand Slam decider. The same team won the World Cup eight months later but the March showdown in Lansdowne Road remains probably their signature performance.
The 2003 World Cup-winning team drew little credit from the Celtic nations for their achievement. (Nor for that matter did the host nation pay them much respect, with former great winger and now professional larrikin David Campese lambasting them as 'boring' at every turn).
Unsurprisingly, the better an England team is, the more despised it is. The Will Carling-led team of the early 90s, for instance, was arguably even more disliked than Clive Woodward's outfit. They picked up three Grand Slams in five seasons.
It may explain why English rugby fans and players appear to revel in their reputation as the team the rest love to hate. It's not the best week to quote Millwall fans. But they are the authors of one of the most celebrated chants in history.
'Nobody likes us, we don't care!' We're not sure how big a football fan Eddie Jones is but it sounds like the kind of sentiment he would endorse with a cackle.
Expect a hard-nosed, snarling, confrontational England team to troop out on the Lansdowne Road pitch this Saturday.
Follow Ireland v England (4.45pm) via our liveblog on RTÉ.ie/sport and the News Now app, or listen to live national radio commentary on RTÉ Radio 1's Saturday Sport
