Ireland had much bigger hopes for Saturday. The plan was for the Eternal City to provide an epic backdrop for another Grand Slam and the storybook ending for retiring centurions Peter O’Mahony, Conor Murray and Cian Healy.
The Triple Crown-sealing win over Wales in round three certainly had them on track, only for France to rock up to Dublin and rip Irish plans to shreds.
But even if the 30,000 or so Irish fans that will descend on Stadio Olimpico are approaching Super Saturday with a sense of anti-climax, captain Caelan Doris insists such a grim disposition has not infiltrated the squad.
“Obviously last week was very disappointing and it changes the nature of the end of it, but for us it’s still about finishing with our best performance. The rest is out of our control,” said Doris.
“But the three lads [O’Mahony, Murray and Healy], what they’ve contributed, the group we have, we really want to finish with our best performance yet and that’s been a key theme through the week.
“Obviously there was quite a bit of disappointment for 24, 48 hours post-game and it can be tricky seeing some of the clips back and the images and the frustration around that.
“But we turned the page quite quickly and are getting excited about a special weekend over here with our best performance yet in front of 25,000 or 30,000 Irish travelling over, which will be incredibly special.”
