Flying high: Ireland will compete at the World Cup as the reigning Six Nations champions. Photo: Getty Images
When it mattered most, Ireland remembered how to entertain again. They had threatened to go through this Six Nations as austere automatons, respected rather than loved for their defensive frugality, but for one afternoon only they unleashed their buccaneering side. With a performance emphatically affirming their credentials to win this autumn's World Cup, they brushed off accusations of a one-dimensional approach by proving that they could win any way they chose.
Here at the final reckoning, Joe Schmidt's players resembled a pack of wolfhounds let off the leash. From the scampish Conor Murray to the unfading Paul O'Connell, from the indefatigable Sean O'Brien to the one-time Gaelic football star-in-waiting that is Robbie Henshaw, they set about Scotland with a style that was enterprising yet disciplined, audacious yet almost unfailingly accurate. Emboldened by Wales's extraordinary piece of second-half plunder in Rome, they had an unfettered licence to attack. And for once, they put it to wonderfully effective use.
This was an occasion when the Irish brought out their inner aesthete, splattering great splashes of colour across a previously stark canvas. The economical brilliance of the past six weeks gave way to a far more gung-ho, freewheeling advert for their work, as O'Brien barged through for two crucial tries, while the New Zealand-born Jared Payne provided some precious Kiwi opportunism by darting in under the posts. Not since 1983, when the club of nations still numbered five, had Ireland relished the glory of back-to-back titles.
Ireland coach Joe Schmidt. Photo: AP
But Schmidt is a man becoming accustomed to bulldozing through history. Fresh from engineering back-to-back Heineken Cup titles with Leinster, he has now furnished the Emerald Isle with consecutive Six Nations triumphs in a fraction over 18 months in charge. He has wrought a revolution so profound that talk of Ireland as prospective world champions must now be regarded as more than mere fancy. When Payne admits that he is receiving texts from his All Blacks-supporting friends about facing them in the final at Twickenham on Oct 31, it is no exaggeration.
Ireland could even afford a few lapses by Jonathan Sexton, normally their hardiest perennial, en route to the coronation. The fly-half, the finest on the planet in his position on recent evidence, missed two apparently routine kicks as his team toiled to overhaul Wales's points differential.
The pressure was scrambling the minds of even the most unruffled figures. But when he slotted the critical third, the tension appeared at last to evaporate, as Ireland converted their dominance to inflict their heaviest ever defeat on Scotland at Murrayfield.
Unstoppable: Sean O'Brien of Ireland goes over to score the second try. Photo: Getty Images
The reactions at the end were instructive. While the Ireland side hugged and high-fived, content in their conviction that England could do nothing to surpass them, the beginnings of a mutiny stirred among the home fans. One disgruntled punter raced up several flights of stairs to scream "Disgrace!" at Scotland head coach Vern Cotter, mercifully protected inside a corporate box. The inescapable truth, as the Scots clutch their increasingly familiar wooden spoon, is that they have regressed. That they contrived to lose at home to an Italy side who shipped 182 points should serve as an eternal indignity.
For Ireland, this triumph doubled as a fitting salute to O'Connell, surely making his Six Nations farewell at the age of 35. The body has already taken a few thousand knocks too many and those cauliflower ears are, by his own admission, only hanging on by a sliver of cartilage, but in his 101st Test in the green jersey he was again the personification of valour. The usual tirelessness at the breakdown was complemented by his decisive move for the opening try, bundling over from close range after Henshaw had been denied by a last-ditch tackle from Stuart Hogg.
"He is our leader," Schmidt said. "It was a leader's performance."
The sum was perhaps expressed best in the utter exhaustion. The flanker, exceptional all Six Nations, scored first from a line-out, and then in the dying stages when Ireland's remorseless pressure told again. "We did all that we could," O'Brien said. "It's important that we expressed ourselves."
They did so with a vivid exclamation mark. Ireland had been attracting many a suggestion, not least from All Blacks coach Steve Hansen, that they represented all that was dour and unglamorous about northern-hemisphere rugby, that they were preoccupied with eliminating errors to the exclusion of enthralling the neutrals. But they confirmed here that they were no less impressive once the brake was released. With these four brilliantly worked tries, they showed beyond all doubt that they could be flamboyant as well as parsimonious.
It is such versatility that makes them so dangerous. Ireland have made many a telling statement this winter, not least in the clinical victory in Dublin over England - who they play twice more in World Cup warm-up games - but nothing underscores their supremacy on this stage quite like the defence of their title. When England hoisted the Webb Ellis trophy aloft in 2003, they had won three of these championships in four years. The Irish find themselves in that same auspicious form. First the Six Nations, now the world.
The Telegraph, London
