Bust-ups, buses and boardrooms – the roots of a hostile rivalry

It’s not that Scotland want to beat Ireland, they want to be like them. Winning a Triple Crown would add competitive nature to this one-sided relationship

The objective analysis of the disparity extends below international level.

Scotland didn’t celebrate their first professional trophy – for club or country – until Glasgow Warriors’ mini surge in the mid-2010s, when their Celtic League win did much to graduate their coach, Gregor Townsend, into the position he still occupies nationally.

On just two occasions did they emerge from their pool to reach the European knockout stages, but in 2017 and 2019 their run ended at the quarter-final stage.

Irish provinces have won seven Champions Cups while the two Scottish clubs, each of whom boast larger budgets than any English side, have remained in their slipstream.

Even in the less rarefied climes of the Celtic League and its variety of iterations, the Scots have performed dismally, aside from that one-off Glasgow success in 2015.

The IRFU remain financially buoyant, through careful and conservative husbandry; the Scots are wallowing in debt north of €10m and few mourned the departure of their most recent chief executive.

For a sporting rivalry to exist, it requires competition and as difficult as it is to conceive of when it may resume, it is even harder to discern when it really began.

Animus, if it ever existed in the past between Scotland and Ireland, may have germinated when they famously “didn’t turn up” in 1972 during the war in Northern Ireland, even though England did.

Other than that, occasional skirmishes hinted at a festering sore, later scratched to ooze bile.

The 1991 World Cup clash was arguably the most pertinent marker; when Jim Staples was concussed by Finlay Calder while fielding a Garryowen.

Promptly, the Scots launched another bomb in his direction, the Irish full-back dropped it as the Scots scored a try to retrieve victory from defeat.

Scarring memories of last week’s concession of a Grand Slam opportunity will remind others of 2001, when the postponed championship occasioned an Irish stutter when perhaps poised for a clean sweep.

Not for the first time in this story, Townsend would be a principal figure, thoroughly outplaying his opposite number Ronan O’Gara as the Scots inflicted that year’s only championship defeat upon the Irish.

Apparently, in 1999, the Grand Slam-winning Scots had despatched spies to thieve Ireland’s lineout calls; returning to Murrayfield in 2003, Eddie O’Sullivan hatched a plan to ditch a false set of lineout gambits in a bin where his side were training. They would not be fooled twice.

Four years later, though, another defeat to Scotland also cost Ireland a championship – they would lose on points difference to France.

The real story in Murrayfield that day was one that nobody had witnessed.

Ireland coach O’Sullivan claimed O’Gara had been strangled beneath a ruck – Nathan Hines, a one-time Leinster lock, was later unveiled as the alleged assailant.

In the testy post-match press conference, and estranged formalities as the squads attending the evening function, the seeds of renewed bitterness had been sown.

Despite the fact that O’Gara denied the incident had occurred, and subsequently apologised to Hines, the episode had glued itself into the public consciousness.

And so, though Ireland had won their third Triple Crown in four years, the Scots were holders of the wooden spoon, somehow a rivalry had been reborn.

It made as little sense then as it does now.

But the trope had been established; one side volubly portrays a perceived slight, the other reacts with mock offence, and supporters chew voraciously on the leftovers.

The advent of social media has heightened, often coarsened, what was once in a distant age merely porter-fuelled merriment.

Intermittent flashpoints illustrated this; for example, the Scots were furious when accusing Johnny Sexton of feigning injury when cleared out by Alex Dunbar in the 2016 edition.

It hadn’t mattered that Ireland almost certainly would have won had Dunbar remained on the field but the sense of outrage lingered on one side, a feeling of eyebrow-raising derision on the other.

A year later, Joe Schmidt’s complaints about wayward policemen detouring their bus through the streets of Edinburgh provoked a rare event as each sides were conjoined in mirthful mockery.

The errant Paddy Jackson’s place-kicking preparations were waylaid, and a collective always so regimented under the Kiwi coach seemed flustered as they slumped to miserable defeat.

Again, like other flashpoints, it would have been quite easily forgotten; remarkably though, despite being unprompted, Schmidt reintroduced it in the week of the following week’s fixture, a win that precipitated this potentially historic run of successes.

As with other genuine rivals, interprovincial fare fuelled the fires; notably,

‘The Scots were furiouswhen accusing Johnny Sexton of feigning injurywhencleared out by Alex Dunbar’