Fans live their best lives as Lions lose out on historic Dublin opener
Go ahead, scoff. Plenty will. 'The British and Irish Lions'. The very phrase tends to get up the nose of a sizeable portion of the population. Some of them are even embedded in rugby's everyday community. But this felt like an … event.
It just hit differently.
Call them an anachronism, or a corporate machine, but you can't fake a sense of occasion.
There was something quirky and inherently giddy about the sight of Baggot Street and Beggar's Bush awash with that famous sea of red. And with the subsequent colonisation of the three-tiered verdant spread of seats inside the stadium itself.
Here, in Dublin, was the canvas we had seen projected on our screens so many times down the years when so many thousands of travelling fans from these islands have laid claim to vast chunks of Loftus Versfeld, Eden Park or Suncorp Stadium.
Friday night's game against Argentina marked the first time the famous touring team had ever played a game on Irish soil. It's a rare enough treat across the Irish Sea, too. This was just the third sighting hereabouts since before the haunted trip to New Zealand in 2005.
Word, and modern ticketing systems, had it that over half of those in the full house of 51,700 had bought their way in from outside of Ireland. Proof of it was in the smattering of kilts and leeks and in the smorgasbord of accents that abounded in D4.
One guy was dressed wig to toe in a kit from the tourists' 1970s heyday, his movements as he skipped up the steps with his tray of beer not exactly prompting the iconic images of a JPR or a JJ in full flight, but we'll forgive him that.
Pints. Sunshine. The Lions. People here were living their best lives. Jeer if you must, but there is something to be said for groups from the Welsh Valleys, Middle England, the Scottish Borders and Ireland north and south having the craic together like this.
It shouldn't work? You're right, but it does. What of it?
One discordant note caught the ear when a group of lads, decked in uniform Lions jerseys, approached a hat and scarf stall on the corner of Raglan Road and Elgin Road. 'Irish hats please,' one of them said, 'everyone thinks we're English.' The warm-up, so often a scene of minor interest, was in itself a means of familiarisation with a cool tableaux: Bundee Aki and Sione Tuipulotu running practice lines on one side, Maro Itoje and Tadhg Beirne engaging in a second row clinch for a simulated scrum.
Fantasy rugby, but for real.
It was Beirne, Munster's finest, who plucked the kick-off from the warm city air just after eight o'clock and it was met by a guttural roar, a release, that put you in the mind of the opening race at Cheltenham or midnight on New Year's Eve.
What followed was a deathly hush. An emotional peak and pitch had been achieved and there was nowhere else to go in that moment but back to zero. Or maybe it was a combination of the sweltering weather and the hours so many had spent in the city's bars.
There was plenty of stop-start, some caused by spills, others by TMO checks or HIA calls. But that was to be expected given the ad hoc DNA that is in the Lions and a Pumas team that was playing as a collective for the first time in seven months.
Sprinkled around all that was some real quality.
Both teams showed some exhilarating skills with ball in hand. Bundee Aki's opening try for the Lions followed a dizzying game of hot potato in contact with Luke Cowan-Dickie, Marcus Smith, Sione Tuipulotu and Fin Smith all fingertipping the pill on.
Argentina saw that and raised it with two sumptuous tries, both of them on the break. Tomas Albornoz and Santiago Cordero claimed the points in question but to focus on the finishes would be like gushing over the frame that holds the Mona Lisa.
The Wallabies have shown signs of rebirth under Joe Schmidt in the last year but concerns remain over the quality of challenges available to the Lions before the Test series. So maybe being 21-10 down here at the break, and then 28-24, was no bad thing.
Losing 24-28? Not so great, but hardly disastrous either.
There was one genuinely lovely moment approaching the 74th minute when Owen Farrell, son of Lions head coach Andy and a man was felt hounded out of international rugby by persistent abuse, popped up on the big screen and got one of the night's biggest cheers.
One of England's finest, loaded with love by a Dublin crowd. Quite the night.
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