The coach and captain of Ireland's last Triple Crown-winning rugby team are hoping to lose that tag today, they tell Shane Hegarty
Today, if Ireland beat Scotland, we will win rugby's Triple Crown for the first time in 19 years. Actually, it has been 18 years, 11 months and 27 days. But who's counting? In 1985, the wait had been a little more bearable. The Triple Crown had been nabbed in 1982, when Ciaran Fitzgerald captained the country to a first win in 33 years. But the team that he led out against England on a showery March day three years later had surprised everyone except themselves in getting so far. A young, inexperienced team under new coach Mick Doyle, they had won by playing marvellous running rugby. It was called the "give it a lash" era.
"We'd 48 guys in the first squad," remembers Doyle, "and only two smoked."
Yet these were the earliest signs of a new breed of player. Doyle had brought in a dietician, despite the scepticism of the IRFU. Meanwhile, the traditional image of the players relaxing at the bar on the eve of a match is largely misplaced.
"There might have been one individual who liked a pint the night before," recalls Fitzgerald. "And some of the other lads might tag along for a soft drink. But it was just for the ritual of it."
The original match had been postponed from January due to snow and was eventually played a couple of weeks after the rest of the championship had been wound up. The day's match programme contains two team sheets, with black lines through the original one. There is an ad for Ansbacher Bank ("providing you with access to major securities throughout the world") and the players' pen profiles note their day jobs.
Ireland's try was scored by a student, the winning kick by a commercial banker. The side was captained by an army officer. His front-row partner, Jim McCoy, was an RUC officer.
While the current Irish team spent this week at camp together, the 1985 team spent all but the last couple of days behind their desks, fending off questions from curious workmates. A four-week gap since the previous match had allowed a little kink to creep into their swagger.
"There was pressure, absolutely," recalls Doyle. "But I think the fact that the team had won it in 1982 took away a lot of it for me. Anyway, as far as we were concerned, we were going to win, that was the end of it. We weren't going to tolerate losing, we weren't going to think about losing or drawing or anything."
When the players went into the dressing-room before the game, they left behind a beautiful day. By the time they ran out on to the pitch that beautiful day had been washed away by heavy rain.
"The fact that it rained was the biggest disappointment of all, because we couldn't do anything," says Doyle. "We couldn't run the ball, we couldn't do a thing. We didn't play the kind of game we wanted to play, even though we won. So I've kind of mixed feelings."
There are days when Lansdowne Road is nothing but a jaded heap, the atmosphere carried away by the gale; when the loudest noise comes from the DART passing behind the West Stand. Yet some days the crowd's roar surges down from terraces and stand, gathering weight until it crashes onto the pitch. That day in 1985 had a magical intensity about it that has rarely been matched since. The captain remembers few details.
"The match itself was a blur, but it's often like that," Fitzgerald says. "Once you start, your focus is on the next move and then the next one. But I just remember we were getting nowhere against them. We were in our own half and I knew time was against us. I just remember the feeling that they were getting the upper hand and that they were gradually grinding us down."
The English pack dragged the Irish down into the dirt. In the days before tactical substitutions, Doyle sat in the stand, unable to affect the game. As things got worse, he tried to ignore his two young daughters who, seated on the touchline below him, kept looking around and giving their father the thumbs-up.
Following Brendan Mullin's opportunistic first-half try, England had drawn level and, with only minutes to go, the game was slipping away. Fitzgerald, his headband grimy, the mud weighing down his jersey, walked among a wounded team, unaware that his desperate rallying cry would become an iconic one: "Where's your f***ing pride!"
"I don't know where it came from," he says. "It was getting near the end of the game and I had tried everything. Time was running down and I was on the last page of the notebook, so to speak. We had to keep in there. In that context, it just came out."
It worked. Ireland scrapped their way up the field and won the game. Fitzgerald turned from a ruck to see the ball airborne, and the crowd rising to greet Michael Kiernan's last-minute drop goal.
"Some said that he had men outside him, so I remember that one of my thoughts was that it was a brave decision," Fitzgerald says. Finally, Doyle could enjoy himself.
"To see Kiernan turning around, smiling and laughing, I knew that was it, the end," he says. "That was a phenomenal, phenomenal time. It was like Jonny Wilkinson's drop goal against Australia in the World Cup final. Last minute. It was incredible."
Fitzgerald isn't sure where the match ball is now. "I think I had all the balls from the matches, but they've gone to various charities over the years," he says. "I might still have the match ball and I kept most of the jerseys but a lot of that stuff is in suitcases in the attic. I'm not sure what I still have."
It is a precious item. Neither Fitzgerald nor Doyle ever believed we would have to wait so long for another shot at the Triple Crown, but when professionalism came in it carried off the big nations and left us doggy-paddling in their wake.
There have been grim days since, on which fathers tried to convince crestfallen sons that things had been great once and would be again some day, only for the argument to be lost among 49,000 sighs as the opposition ran in another try. While Doyle admits he had moments when he wondered whether we would ever climb out of the slump, Fitzgerald - who coached the team between 1990 and 1992 - says he knew we would have to catch up in the professional era. But it's been a hard wait.
"When I came back from Twickenham after the game against England," he says, "the number of people I met who hadn't gone because they were simply fed up going over there and getting beaten and then getting slagged off over it by business associates or whoever - they just couldn't face that prospect. The number of them who then said they were so sorry that they didn't go, but I suppose they'd spent years going there with no reward."
Neither believes that the 1985 win changed his life as such, although Fitzgerald says that it reinforced his belief that "a lot of things are possible, even when it seems very difficult to do".
Nevertheless, both became household names. Fitzgerald found business success through vending machines and washroom advertising. Doyle wrote an autobiography, packed with tales of adventures both on the pitch and in the bedroom. Its title, Zero Point One Six, refers to the percentage who recover from the kind of brain haemorrhage he suffered in 1996.
The two will be together at Lansdowne Road today, commentating on the match for RTÉ radio. This might be their final morning as the last coach and captain to bring Ireland the Triple Crown. If it is, then they'll be as relieved as anyone.
"I met Eddie O'Sullivan after the Italian game," remarks Doyle. "And I said, for Jesus' sake will you beat Scotland and get us all off the hook. And he said, we'll give it a lash."
"I'll be delighted for them if they win today," admits Fitzgerald. "I'm weary from carrying it for the last 19 years."