By Cormac MacConnell

I remember a time, only a few decades ago, when Irish rugby teams, after a fiery first half, were eventually subdued by all the other nations. It is only about 15 years ago, at a very low ebb altogether, that the English pack shoved them all over Twickenham with near contempt, inflicting the great indignity of a pushover try on the wilting green jerseys at least twice if not three times.

Back then every win, especially against England, was celebrated for a week. Back then we won a Triple Crown about once every 30 years, and no matter what way it was won it was like as if we found the Holy Grail.

The Irish team won the Triple Crown for the third time in four years in Murrayfield of the Scots a few Saturdays ago. Incredibly afterwards there was almost an air of gloom because they had to struggle to win.

They did not blow Scotland away in the same style as that with which they crushed England in Croke Park. You would think we had lost to look at the long faces afterwards, especially the players themselves.

Earlier in the season they had narrowly lost to France through a last minute try and that was seen as a total disaster because they were favorites for the so-called Grand Slam and the entire championship. And indeed, they came so close, but yet so far, in winning the championship on St. Patrick’s Day in Rome. But it wasn’t to be.

But for me the telling reality is that nobody celebrated the Triple Crown at all. That team, like the island from which it springs, now has far higher aspirations and ambitions than of old.

They are winners who want to win all the time with style and flair. And they are among the hot favorites to actually win the rugby World Cup later this year. And on form and ability they deserve that seeding.

What a change!

There is another crucial element. This is a team drawn from all Ireland. It always has been, even in sharply divided sectarian times.

The current side, the best ever, boasts the gritty resilience of Ulster as strongly as it does the guts of Munster and the flair of Leinster. Occasionally there is a Connacht rock of a player in there too. It’s a united side backed by a united sporting public. And they are all winners.

And that begs the thought of how well Ireland could do in international competition across the scale if the same situation obtained, say, in soccer.

No telling where Ireland would have stood a decade ago if the talents of the Ulster players could have been blended with the likes of Keane and Staunton and Houghton and company from the Republic.

Today, still divided on the soccer front, we have two mediocre panels sliding slowly downwards on the international scale. There are always tentative moves going on towards unity on this score, and God willing it will come to pass someday soon.

Stranger things are happening by the day in this remarkable new era. Our traditional monoculture is fragmenting because of immigration, and that is a very good thing in sporting terms too.

Open any local newspaper and, especially in soccer and athletics, our African immigrants especially are smiling out at you above gold and silver medals. The movement begun by the magnificent O’hAilpin hurling brothers from Cork, their mother from Fiji, is being strengthened by the year.

Stronger teams in every discipline are now bringing home hauls of gold, silver and bronze. This past month, apart from the silver Triple Crown, medals came back from the indoor athletics championships in Birmingham and from a major amateur boxing tournament in Croatia. And they were gold medals too.

What is happening quietly in the social world is being emphasized in the sporting arena by teams of sportsmen and women who do not all have an O or a Mac in their names. It’s great to see it happening. It has to be good for our future right across the board.

I remember being blown away by the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York about 10 or 12 years ago, not just at its zest and confidence and electric atmosphere, but also at the flamboyant multi-culturality of the marchers, clearly from about every country on the face of the globe. Anyone watching our modern parades in towns and cities across Ireland can now clearly see the same thing.

There is now a bright Brazilian beat to the parade in Gort in Galway, an African and Polish complexion on the Ennis parade, and Dublin and Galway and Cork are now as cosmopolitan as the great event in New York. It’s something that’s exciting to watch, developing mushroom-like on an island which has become so accustomed to winning times that it is gloomy when that winning is not achieved with style.

I never thought I’d see the day. I’m seeing it. And the feeling is good.