One of the most endearing features of the Six Nations which we take for granted but which is always worth celebrating is the manner supporters travel in such vast numbers to away games, mixing and mingling with hospitable hosts with no need for any separation much less segregation.
This weekend, for example, well-placed people in the tourism sector reckon that around 20,000 Irish supporters will descend upon Rome and the Stadio Oilimpico for Ireland’s concluding 2025 Six Nations fixture on Saturday (kick-off 2.15pm Irish time).
“We are taking our biggest contingent of Irish fans to an away Six Nations game,” says Paddy Baird of Killester Travel. “That is about 2,000 Irish fans and we generally account for 10 per cent of the travelling support, so I suppose you could conservatively estimate that there will be 20,000 people heading to Rome this weekend.”
Steve Aboud: the Irishman who saved Italian rugby
Apparently the Italian Federation had to stop the sale of tickets to rugby supporters in Ireland, and Italian sources estimate that on the basis of ticket sales as many as 25,000 Irish fans are expected to be at the game in Rome.
The combination of the final round of the Six Nations and St Patrick’s Day falling on Monday has revived memories of the days of the Celtic Tigers, particularly the corresponding weekend in 2007.
Rome is to Irish fans what Dublin evidently is to French fans. In France they singalong to the enormously popular folk song Connemara and they know the words of Ireland’s Call better than we do. They travel to Ireland for the Six Nations in greater numbers than any other away weekend and tend to extend their time here, maybe even taking in other parts of the country.
Baird and others in the know estimated that 10,000-12,000 French supporters travelled to Ireland for last weekend’s fixture. They utterly outsang the home support and, helped by the game panning out as it did, made it into a home game for France.
French supporters bring a significant boost to the economy and are superbly behaved and widely liked. The feeling is reciprocal. The rugby bond between the two countries has been strengthened over the last 25 years by the advent of the European/Heineken/’H’/Champions Cup, bringing club/provincial supporters to parts of each other’s countries that they otherwise might never have experienced.
That Gallic-Irish bond between supporters ought not be affected by the fallout from last weekend’s clash, specifically the ACL injury sustained by France’s captain Antoine Dupont.
Dupont and his deputy as captain Grégory Alldritt both complained to referee Angus Gardner about the clearout by Tadhg Beirne and Andrew Porter. Gardner deemed it a rugby incident. So too did his TMO, Ireland’s interim head coach Simon Easterby, and the BBC’s Six Nations television and radio panels.
Yet France’s head coach Fabien Galthié accused Beirne and Porter of foul place, calling their actions “reprehensible”. Romain Ntamack has suggested a French player would have incurred a red card for the same, while bemoaning what he saw as comparatively favourable treatment for Garry Ringrose in light of their respective 20-minute red cards.
For sure, that Ringrose’s two-game ban included a URC game while Ntamack’s did not include a Top 14 game typified some of the inconsistencies in World Rugby’s process. But Ntamack’s shoulder-to-head on Ben Thomas, within two minutes of the Wales player’s legitimate shot on him, looked much worse than Ringrose’s head-on-head clash with the same player.
William Servat, one of France’s forwards coaches, said they had alerted the referee before the game on the way Ireland forwards were operating in the rucks and had allegedly identified 10 times when Beirne or others were “contesting from east to west and not from north to south”.
Yet there were no citings against Beirne by the game’s citing commissioner. However, Porter has been compelled to deny he would ever look to intentionally hurt Dupont or any other player, while Beirne and his family have been the victims of vile abuse on social media following the incident.
Easterby appeared to be seething over the fallout, and within the Irish camp it seems utterly reprehensible of France to suggest that any player would deliberately seek to injure an opponent.
Yet Dupont’s injury has been the topic of the week within the French camp with the players expressing their anger.
As the countering views have become more entrenched, so the saga has been more unedifying and regrettable. A shame, so out of keeping with the spirt of the Six Nations.
This episode and its fallout has left wounds that will linger. Time may prove a healer, but if so, it certainly will take time. As is the way of the world these days, relations have been damaged.
Quel dommage.
