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19th November 2018
05:36pm GMT

Irish rugby fans have been accused of losing perspective and yet for most of our rugby history we have been rubbish and now we have a team that can lay legitimate claim to being the best side in the world and they have to contend with issues of classism, friendlies, that they've never made it past a Rugby World Cup quarter-final, that they've robbed players from other countries and that there's only about eight good teams in the world.
There's only about eight good teams in hurling but try tell the Limerick hurlers that their All-Ireland win is lessened by the fact that there's only eight good teams in the country.
There were more players on the Irish football team born outside of these shores when they beat Germany in 2015 than when Ireland beat New Zealand on Saturday but try telling the footballers that their win against the 2014 World Cup winners means any less.
Even take CJ Stander and Bundee Aki, the residency rule poster boys. One was found belting out the Fields of Athenry in a Galway beer garden after Connacht's PRO12 title win in 2016 while the other literally spent hours in a room trying to nail down the words to Ambhran na bhfiann. Is that not the gold standard for people that come to this country, to embrace culture and tradition?
Ireland have beaten New Zealand, South Africa and Australia in Autumn and Summer internationals over the last year, or friendlies as they are being called. Sides that have won seven of the eight World Cups.
If Ireland beat any one of France, Germany, Spain and Italy in football friendlies at the Aviva would we scoff at it? Christ, we'd take a win over Northern Ireland at this stage. Shit, we'd even take scoring a goal by current standards.
The fact that Ireland have never made it past a Rugby World Cup quarter-final is undoubtedly a blemish on their record but realistically there's only three, potentially four of those World Cups, where they may have been expected to advance past that stage.
Their failure at the 2007 and 2015 Rugby World Cups are the headline disappointments but even in 2011 they lost to a Wales side that won the Grand Slam the following season and were a Sam Warburton red card away from being in a World Cup final at that tournament.
In 2003 they lost to France, a side that won Grand Slam titles in both 2002 and 2004.
There are many reasons people may not like rugby. There are many things about it that may rub people up the wrong way.
But to try and take something away from a side that beat the best team in the world, in a year where they won just their third Grand Slam title and their first ever series in Australia, just seems a bit miserable.
But maybe that's just who we are, or at least how we can be perceived.
Here was what LA Times columnist Andrew McCarthy noted back in 2012 when he returned to Ireland after a decade abroad.
"There are no people on Earth as romantic as the French. No one is punctual like the Swiss. The Germans have defined a sense of order. The Italians know how to eat. And no one, I mean no one, does misery like the Irish.
"Ireland’s well-chronicled story of rags to riches to rags again is a cautionary tale of the early 21st century. A country reared on hardship, famine and oppression has, after a brief turn in the economic sun, been cast back into the misty gloom of struggle."
The struggle can be real Andrew. How the rugby team's success has been treated in some quarters is just a case in point.Explore more on these topics: