For a second there, I was almost about to ask why we’re so utterly fixated with beating the English!

WE’RE having quite the week of Irish-English rivalry, at least when it comes to sport. Even those who normally don’t have too much interest in four-legged animals or oval-shaped balls are expected to get caught up in the patriotic fervour of putting one or two over on the English, as is widely, if perhaps too optimistically, anticipated.

Some have reduced the Cheltenham Festival of horse racing to a head count between Irish and English winners. Ireland have already won the Six Nations international rugby tournament, with a game to spare, and the fact that it can complete the Grand Slam – for only the third time ever – is apparently made even sweeter, and more essential, by the fact that the final game that must be won, to complete the achievement known as the Grand Slam, is against England at Twickenham this Saturday.

Throw in the fact that it is St Patrick’s Day on Saturday and you have an occasion for stereotypical Irish celebration – yes, with plenty of drink added in – presenting itself readily.

Hatred

In most respects it is simply harmless fun. It is a nice distraction from the crises in our daily lives, such as the hospital trolley numbers or the contemptuous nastiness that is blighting already the debate on the referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.

Wanting to beat the English at Twickenham is merely an example of the playful competitiveness of near neighbours and does not represent any deep-seated animus towards that other nation. Or does it? In many ways it should be irrelevant as to which other country in the competition Ireland is playing against this Saturday. A Grand Slam – as it is called – is five victories in total, each against England, France, Italy, Scotland and Wales, irrespective of what order in which the matches are played. Winning in Twickenham on Saturday would not make this a ‘better’ or more notable Grand Slam than the one achieved in 2009.

I can’t imagine that the players and coaching staff for Ireland are treating it in that way, as being more important to beat the English for the sake of beating the English.

Their goal is to beat whoever stands in their way, whoever that is, to achieve the overall objective. I wonder how Ireland’s English defence coach Andy Farrell would feel about trying to motivate the team to win because of a hatred for the British, made even more complicated by the fact that his own son Owen is certain to play for England and may even be captain of the team.

Much has been made in recent days of how, last year, Irish-trained horses won the majority of races at Cheltenham, as if this was some sort of validation of supposed Irish horse racing superiority. Essentially, however, the horses running at Cheltenham represent nobody other than their owners – and most certainly not the dreams of the Irish nation.

The horses are not carrying Irish national colours, even if they are Irish. But each owner and trainer sends their horses out to win for themselves, not to beat the English. The latter would be a poor motivation. It is others who might try to build up the contest, which is unofficial and for which there is no prize, in that way.

Each race is individual. And to further complicate things, you can have – as happens all the time and will likely happen this week – an Irish owner, Irish jockey and Irish-bred horse that is trained by an Englishman and, as such, goes down as an English winner.

Failure

Sport is what unites instead of divides these islands, which is why beating England at rugby is a worthwhile desire but not an absolute imperative. When the Irish team denied England the Grand Slam last season, winning 13-9 at Lansdowne Road, the motivation of the Irish team surely was not denying the English their prize, for the sake of doing so, but proving that they were a better team than they had shown in their previous games.

Making up for the failure to be competing for a Grand Slam ourselves was the motivator… and it is this pride in themselves that will similarly power the Eng- lish this weekend rather than a desire to do down the Irish.

Historically, when it comes to sport, as well as other aspects of life, we have always cavilled at being patronised by the English… and often with good reason. We have also taken great pride in pitching at the same weight, given the disparity in population. For example, we gloried in the way that the English soccer team has been unable to beat us in any major fixture in recent decades. Many fans still dine out on the glory of Ray Houghton’s winning goal against England in the European Championships of 1988 – ten years ahead of the Good Friday Agreement – as if it was yesterday. Even if Houghton was born in Scotland, many of that Irish team spoke with broad English accents and we still loved them all.

Damaged

Not even the rioting by a minority of English football hooligans at Lansdowne Road in 1995 – leading to the abandonment of a so-called friendly international – has damaged the ever-improving relationship between the two countries. There has even been an Irish victory over England in cricket’s one-day World Cup, making fans out of people who still wouldn’t know a bowler from a batsman.

We might also do well to remember this Saturday that England may actually be our closest friends in international sport, most especially rugby. It was England who famously came to play in Dublin in 1973 during the height of the Troubles, after Scotland and Wales had refused to travel the year previously. It was England who voted for Ireland to host the 2023 Rugby World Cup but the Scots and Welsh who failed to honour their promises to vote for us.

We are at a difficult time in our mutual relations because of Brexit and the border issue. The goodwill created by the visit of the Queen of England and her husband to Ireland in 2011 – and reinforced by the reciprocal visit of President Michael D Higgins to Britain – has ebbed somewhat.

Leo Varadkar and Theresa May do not enjoy a warm personal relationship, according to reliable sources: they find conversation hard. The Irish Government was furious that May, during her recent visit to Belfast, was unable to force through the deal on the restoring of democratic institutions to the six counties: the view was that any previous incumbent would have used the weight and authority of her position to force through a deal. Her seeming inability to similarly force through the terms of the deal on the border, agreed pre-Christmas, is also causing grave concern.

Suddenly, the outcome of a rugby match and the need to beat England to do so does not seem quite as important. So let’s just enjoy it for what it is – as long as we win, of course.