It’s never a good sign when the place is crawling with French supporters. They gather in knots along pavements around the stadium, yakking away, disrupting pedestrian traffic, lost in the enjoyment of a sunny Six Nations day in Dublin. Worse still is when you climb to the dizzy height of the press box in the Aviva Stadium and survey a scene where there is lots of blue. Then they start to sing. Not good.
Some of the darkest days in Ireland’s rugby history came with the away leg in this fixture. When on one occasion the front page of L’Équipe read “Le Massacre du Printemps” we learned to associate sunshine in Paris with pain and recrimination. That was the preview, not the match report.
