The boys in green collected their first Grand Slam medals in years yesterday at Lansdowne Road, but alas they were all English.
The convivial tradition of shirt-swapping gave a slightly misleading impression to the conclusion of a match which the visitors comfortably won, albeit by the flattering score of 42-6.
Those stalwarts of English rugby, Brigadier Barbour and Corporal Potbelly, filled Dublin for the weekend. It was too warm for the brigadier to wear his reliable waxed jacket, but the shaven-headed NCO sported his customary white T-shirt, with the umbilicus tastefully displayed as always.
They must have been impressed by the treatment of their national anthem.
Dublin is the only capital in the world which greets God Save the Queen with silence. It was not lack of ardour, merely good manners, as the crowd's spine-tingling rendition of Amhrán na bhFiann then testified.
The first half provided perhaps the most sumptuously pulsating rugby Lansdowne Road has seen in years, as the English second row forward Martin Johnston, soon discovered. He is best known for his trademark cry, "Wot: Me, Ref?", pointing to himself with a look of incredulous innocence.
He was, however, quite lost for words when the mighty Victor Costello turned him upside down and shook him like a salt cellar in a chip-shop.
Geordan Murphy caught the eye with some neat fandagoes through the outer ramparts of the English defence, but worryingly, for all their possession, Ireland never got an unimpeded sight of the English line.
England were fortunate to be 13-6 up at half-time, but there was nothing lucky about their performance afterwards.
They did not so much pitch camp in the Irish half as build a housing estate there, and the English out-half Jonny Wilkinson, the number eight Lawrence Dallaglio and Wot: Me, Ref? were immense.
All Irish attempts to break through the English defence resembled an escape plot by goldfish against the aquarium's glass walls.
Then, in the dying minutes, we were treated to a hallucinogenic trip to yesteryear; when Ireland felt it was somehow inhospitable not to gift their guests a few tries.
At the start, you could have heard The Fields of Athenry in Athenry, Mississippi. By the end, the puzzled residents of that town could hear the more familiar Swing Low, Sweet Chariot coming from the east, as Brigadier Barbour and Corporal Potbelly chorally celebrated score after score for the visitors.
The green grass of Lansdowne Road was now the property of England's outhalf: Wilkinson's sward.
Next stop the World Cup, with the knowledge that Ireland is now a top-flight second division team, and with better still to come.