There are no guarantees in sport and there are reasons why no team has ever won three outright Six Nations Championship titles in a row.
Yet, as the Green Army invaded and took over the Eternal City in a manner that revived memories of their swarming presence at the World Cup, the same thoughts occurred. This could have been epic.
Instead, coming hard on the heels of that comprehensive defeat to France, Saturday’s error-strewn 22-17 win over Italy at a vibrant Stadio Olimpico perhaps provided the most alarming signs yet that this Irish team is not what it was.
In contrast to the new champions France and an upwardly mobile England, rarely can a Six Nations campaign featuring four wins have felt so anticlimactic, not least as it left Ireland sitting third.
“I think when you lose the second-last game, it probably feels that way,” said Simon Easterby in the wake of Ireland’s concluding game. “But if you lose the first game and you win the next four, it feels different. It’s just the nature of losing at home last week in a performance which we know we should have been better.
“I guess we set out to do what we could today to get five points. We could have got three or four more other tries and we didn’t. That’s the difference today between being 25 points better than Italy and being five points better. But we know as well that a large part of that is down to us and our accuracy.”
Although the Italian defence was much improved after conceding 18 tries in their previous two outings against France and England, the Irish attack looked comparatively blunt.
Even so, Easterby maintained: “I genuinely feel that the attacking side of the game has evolved in areas that you guys might not see but it’s also down [to] how well [we do] in the moment, in the pressure situations, how well players deal with those situations and that’s what we find out in these games. We don’t always find them out in other competitions or in the URC.”
Ireland were indebted to their lineout maul and a hat-trick by Dan Sheehan, so becoming the just the fourth Irish player after Brian O’Driscoll (twice), Craig Gilroy and CJ Stander (who each scored three tries in the 63-10 win over Italy here in 2017) to score three tries in a Six Nations match.
Having overtaken Jamie Heaslip and Imanol Harinordoquy as the most prolific try-scoring forward in the championship’s history with his try against France a week previously, Sheehan took his tally to 13 in 19 Six Nations games, and 15 in 32 Tests. And he’s still only 27.
“It’s pretty impressive,” said a smiling Easterby. “The maul gives him that platform and I’m delighted that and the scrum were pretty good today. It gave us the opportunity, in a different way, to score points and sometimes you need to do that.
“The game isn’t always perfect and you need to find a way and I thought the pleasing thing is we did that with the tries that Dan scored from the maul and how effective that was. That’s part of the game, isn’t it? If one way doesn’t work, you need to find the solution with another way that might work.”
If relief was the primary emotion in the Irish camp, for Italy it was a mix of pride in their display and regret that they didn’t complete a famous win.
Easterby will be interim head coach on Ireland’s two-match summer matches away to Georgia and Portugal. As well as Ireland’s Lions’ contingent, which won’t have been enhanced in many cases by the way this campaign petered out, he said “certain older players” might need a rest.
“It’ll be about finding out about certain positions that we feel we need more depth in,” he added, assuredly with scrumhalf in mind. “But also keep continually trying to keep exposing certain players that are already in the system, that have already played part in the Six Nations.
“The tough thing about international rugby is that you get limited time to gain caps and experience,” said Easterby, citing the inclusion of Jack Boyle and Gus McCarthy in the Stadio Olimpico.
On a sunny, warm afternoon in the Eternal City which effectively turned green, at least the squad and 30,000-plus Green Army could send the retiring centurions Peter O’Mahony, Conor Murray and Cian Healy off into the Roman sunset with a victory.
The squad won’t have slept much given an 8am Sunday morning flight home, presumably booked in advance and in the hope that there might have been a celebratory homecoming.
Instead, on winning his second cap, Jack Boyle was also among the Leinster squad travelling to South Africa on Monday for their games against the Bulls and the Sharks.
Actually, one thing is guaranteed. Life, and sport, moves on.
