Jamie Heaslip described it as ‘this green wave’. The morning after the match before and Ireland’s players were still riding it.
Even by the most conservative of estimates, at least 60,000 of the fans packed into Wembley Stadium, on Sunday, were supporting Ireland.
The real fun begins now for Joe Schmidt’s men as they face up to Italy, France and, with luck, the quarter-finals and beyond.
Tommy Bowe is one of the players hoping to be heavily involved in a huge month of rugby. The Ulster was grinning from ear to ear after his two-try salvo in a 44-10 win over Romania.
He took a brave attempt at describing the sensation of playing in front of a record World Cup crowd of 89,297.
“The atmosphere was fantastic,” said Bowe. “The lads were still talking about it at breakfast.
“You still see a few Irish jerseys around there [outside the team hotel], I don’t know if they’re still finding their way home or not.”
He added, “Going out onto the pitch even the build up during the day we were able to look out over the Fanzone from here.
“The amount of green jerseys, even the guys not involved yesterday were saying they were gutted, because the atmosphere to play in Wembley in front of such a big crowd it was such a massive occasion.
“We can’t emphasis enough what it means to the team to have such a crowd behind you.
“It really does add a huge element to our game, and over the next couple of weeks we’re really going to need it as well.”
Bowe was quick to retort Simon Zebo’s claims that he had not been trying to butter up Schmidt ahead of the Italian game.
“He’s been sucking up the last couple of weeks,” the winger joked.
“What can you do? We’re back in training tomorrow, everybody’s back out onto the pitch again and we’ll just be doing what we can.
“That’s the strength of the squad, that the coaches really do have us under such pressure – we go out there, we don’t know anything, so we’re out there to prove in whatever small way we can to put our hand up and get ourselves in line for that game.”
