"Two years ago is a long time," Mike Catt laughs, as he is reminded of his side's last trip to Twickenham.
A lot of rugby has been played since that Guinness Six Nations meeting two years ago. To be specific, Ireland have played 24 games in that period, and have won 22 of them.
The 32-15 win away to England back on 12 March 2022 wasn’t a major shock.
On paper and on form, Ireland were the better team heading into the game, while an early red card for England’s Charlie Ewels left Eddie Jones’ side chasing the game from the start.
While it was a bonus-point victory, and the most points Ireland had ever scored away to England, it had been a scrappy and nervy Irish performance against 14 men, as Farrell’s side scored 17 unanswered points in the final quarter to pull clear and set up their Triple Crown win against Scotland a week later.
Wins away to England are always significant – it was just Ireland’s second win in London since 2011 – but given what this Irish side have gone on to do since, hindsight shows it to be a particularly important milestone.
Andy Farrell had enjoyed some big wins in his first two years in charge, and there were clear signs that his Irish team were progressing.
Their win at home to England the previous year was arguably the turning point for the team, who had gone through the motions in 2020 and early in 2021, while they would also go on to defeat the All Blacks that November, playing an all-action and exhilarating brand of rugby.
All of those big performances and landmark wins had come at home though. Their ability to pull out big wins in hostile environments was still an unknown.
In large part, that was down to Covid-19. In Farrell’s first year in charge, he’d only brought his side on one away trip before the stadiums were emptied, and it was a chastening experience as Ireland were beaten 24-12 by then-World Cup finalists England.
The scoreline was flattering to the visitors, with Andrew Porter’s try in the final minute putting some respectability on the scoreboard.
When rugby finally resumed – behind closed doors – that autumn, Ireland struggled away from home.
They were blitzed by France in Paris, and while the margin was only eight points, an Irish try in the last minute again ensured a flattering scoreline.
Another Twickenham trip in November of 2020 produced another defeat in which Ireland hardly landed a glove on the opposition, and an opening-weekend Six Nations defeat to Wales in Cardiff followed early in 2021.
Even though Farrell’s side would break their away form with wins in Rome and Edinburgh in that 2021 championship, there was a sense heading into the 2022 championship that for them to really take the next step, and be considered among the best in the world, a win in either Paris or London would be needed to prove it, particularly with the doors of the stadiums now finally open to supporters.
"I think it was my first time playing at Twickenham in a full capacity stadium," Hugo Keenan says of that 2022 win.
The full-back had played in that 2020 defeat in London behind closed doors when his international career was still very much in its infancy, and in 2022 he was still getting used to Test rugby in front of packed stadiums.
Their first experience had been earlier in the tournament away to France, a game in which they gave as good as they got against the eventual Grand Slam champions, before a respectable 30-24 defeat.
With a tour to New Zealand on the horizon, and Farrell in his third Six Nations campaign, there was pressure on the Ireland coach to deliver a big win away from home.
For large parts, it was arguably their worst overall performance of the campaign, as they saw their scrum pinged off the park, and their game slowed down by a determined England, who had been galvanised by going down to 14 players early on in the game.
Heading into the final quarter, Ireland had seen a 15-6 lead slip back to 15-15, and it looked like they were rattled. They weren’t.
"You can’t afford to [be rattled by mistakes], that’s a big thing of Andy’s," Catt says.
"If you make an error, everyone makes errors and nobody does it on purpose, but get over it and get over it quickly."
And so they did. A penalty from Johnny Sexton with a quarter of an hour to play nudged them back in front, before Jack Conan’s try after 13 phases of attack put some daylight between the sides with eight minutes left, while there was still time for Finlay Bealham to get in for a bonus-point score to emphatically answer whether or not this side could win a big game on the road.
"I think every game we’ve progressed, and again it’s chasing that potential that we feel we need to get to," the Ireland attack coach (below) said.
"Two years ago, three years ago we were just trying to get better as a team and I think that was probably a game where the belief really started kicking in, and since then, that might have been the stepping stone for us to go to another gear but on the back of that, we need to make sure we keep progressing."
Four months later, Ireland would go on to win twice in New Zealand for a famous series win, and the All Blacks are the only side who have beaten them since, one in the first Test that summer, before their World Cup quarter-final heist last October.
"It probably wasn't our best team performance [against England], but we got the job done, and it definitely gave us confidence, that we can compete away from home against any nation," Keenan added.
"We proved it against England, and I think it was important to prove it against some of the Six Nations sides too."
When Ireland return to Twickenham next Saturday, it will be an altogether different kind of pressure.
As soon as the full-time whistle blew in Marseille on 2 February after their hammering of France, Farrell’s side were declared Grand Slam champions in waiting, which would see them become the first back-to-back slammers of the Six Nations era.
"Going back two years ago playing over in France, we let the atmosphere get on top of us," Josh van der Flier says, as he looks towards next Saturday’s return to Twickenham (live on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player).
"We went over this year and put one of our best performances in against France away from home.
"It will be the same in England, in Twickenham. Fans will be cheering against us, we can take a lot of confidence from having put in a good performance in France."
Two steps of their Grand Slam journey remain, and if they can successfully take the first of those next week against England, it will see them win a record 12th game in a row in the championship, breaking the record which had been set by the English in 2017.
If they repeat that bonus-point result from two years ago they’ll have wrapped up the title with a game to spare, which would leave just the Grand Slam to think about in the final week against Scotland.
Unlike 2022, they know what they need to do.
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