The sporting decade that was: the grandest of grand slams

March 17th, 2018, Twickenham: England 15 Ireland 24

To put the 2018 Grand Slam in context, Ireland had only ever completed two of them before – in 1948 and 2009. Nor could the finale have been set up much better – against outgoing back-to-back champions England at Twickenham on St Patrick’s Day.

Ever since that 41-phase drive which led to Johnny Sexton's match-winning drop-goal in Paris, it felt as if destiny had called this Irish team, and the ensuing wins over Italy, Wales and then Scotland had secured the Six Nations title a week beforehand.

Whereas Joe Schmidt made one change, restoring Iain Henderson to the starting line-up, Eddie Jones made seven, and two positional switches, and England – after successive defeats by Scotland and France – had begun to look weary.

For the sun-drenched captains runs of the day before - it had been T-shirt weather - come the snowy Saturday it was truly Baltic. The number of Irish supporters were three or four times the official allocation of 5,000.

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Save for that endgame in Paris, Ireland had been efficient front-runners, and so it was here, as all three first-half tries went to the TMO. Garry Ringrose pounced for the first inside five minutes when Sexton's on-the-money up-and-under came down on Anthony Watson with snow and Rob Kearney on it.

A sweetly executed strike move saw Tadhg Furlong's pirouette and deft transfer put Bundee Aki through for his try-scoring pass inside to the supporting CJ Stander. Conor Murray's blindside draw-and-give put Jacob Stockdale away for a trademark chip-and-touchdown for his seventh try of the tournament.

“It’s hard for it not to be the high point, because right here, right now, it’s a little bit of history for us,” said Schmidt afterwards. “We started this a calendar year ago in the last round of the Six Nations. It’s a really neat story of a year that has managed to see us win every game that we played which is incredibly special.”