It was about 25 minutes into the England game last Saturday when the Aviva started emptying out. The chap in the stand behind me who was roaring “f*** off England” a few minutes before was gone with his friends and never came back. At least the people alongside who refused to stand for God Save the King held on till the second half.
Even the valiant booing that followed Jack Grealish and Declan Rice had trailed off by then, the crowd partly worn out by England’s clinical excellence and Ireland’s total failure to weaponize the atmosphere against them. That goading was the pantomime stuff required to reimagine the benign surroundings of the Aviva over the past year as the cauldron Ireland badly needed. But the