The game against Ireland has long been one of the high-lights of the year for Scottish rugby supporters - and not just because we usually end up on the winning side. The biennial trip to Dublin, in particular, is looked forward to eagerly. Visits to Twickenham may occasion enmity, the sight of hordes of well-fed charioteers proving just too provocative. Arrival in dreary, downtrodden Cardiff can provoke an outbreak of apathy. But the Irish capital invariably induces an al-together more amicable feeling.
It's not the stadium. Lansdowne Road is rubble-strewn and ramshackle, and has required a facelift for so long that one begins to think the operation would not be worth the bother. The fact that trains run right underneath one of the stands has a certain Toytown-type charm to it, but otherwise the old ground is distinctly lacking in appeal. If we could only make off with the Millennium Stadium, maybe by getting a couple of tugs to transport it all the way from Cardiff Bay to Dublin Bay, then a weekend in the Irish capital would be complete. But if it's not the unloved old Lansdowne that makes the Dublin visit so special, what is it? Certainly not the rugby - not, at least, in the aesthetic sense of being able to watch some highly edifying displays of athleticism.
The games themselves, in recent years at least, have been far from spectacular. In 1998, a Scotland team who had just lost in Italy restored a modicum of self-respect with a dour 17-16 victory. Two years earlier, a 16-10 win was scarcely more invigorating. And in 1994, the 6-6 draw between the countries, played in a howling gale, was the most miserable afternoon of that season's Five Nations Championship.
Recent matches at Murrayfield have generally provided superior fare. This year's 3013 win was a mere stepping-stone for the Scots en route to their championship title, but the 1997 game, a 38-10 victory, was Scotland's biggest win in the history of the fixture. That history began in 1877, with a game in Belfast which Scotland won by four goals, two drop-goals and two tries to nil. Ireland's first victory came four years later, and wins for the team in green remained a rarity until the inter-war years. Three on the trot from 1926 to 1928; three again, 1930-32 and 1935-37.
The immediate post-war period was Ireland's greatest. Their win in 1947 sparked off a run of eight matches in which the Irish finished up on top. Given that they won the last game before the outbreak of war, in Dublin in 1939, the run was actually nine. But nothing comparable has happened since, and Scotland have recently established a stranglehold on the fixture. As we look forward to the first game of the new century, to be held at Lansdowne Road on February 19, Scottish supporters can take comfort from the fact that our last defeat was way back in 1988, when rugby was still amateur and both sides were knackered long before the end and nobody really minded who won because we were the best of friends, on and off the pitch.
In the stands and on the terracing, we still don't really mind about the result, but it's changed a bit out there on the paddock. And it changed some time before professionalism, as Jim Staples will tell you. In the 1991 World Cup match at Murrayfield, the Irish were six points ahead when a tackle of at best dubious legality left Staples, their full-back, reeling and semi-concussed.
Minutes later, Staples spilled a Garryowen from Gary Armstrong, Scotland regained possession and scored, and the game had swung decisively in Scotland's favour.
Thankfully, such incidents have been isolated, for all that the teams compete from first whistle to last with a bone-jarring ferocity. If the players did not do so, if they relaxed a little bit, the entertainment value might improve. Certainly, if pressed, fans of both teams would say yes, of course they'd prefer an entertaining afternoon of rugby. But what happens on the field is strictly secondary.
The appeal of the Dublin visit for many Scots is the difference yet similarity of the place. Whatever the daily reality of the city, for occasional visitors it's like Britain without the bad bits, a liberated zone. Explicit political parallels may not be drawn by every supporter, but many appreciate the sense of self-assuredness about the republic, the air of calm independence. And the beer is good.
