Dallaglio destroys Irish dream with belligerent display

Ireland had their dreams and, for some forlornly fleeting moments, the loveliest of running skill, but England had their method and a will that was simply unbreakable. Their performance was many unanswerable things, including a prolonged sneer at all those who had doubted whether their psyche was as strong as their sinew.

Forty-two points to six sounds like a massacre and it was. It invaded and in the end utterly discredited the idea that this was a meeting of vaguely comparable forces. It wasn't so much shock and awe as a deluge of reality.

It was a slaughter of whimsy and half-formed brilliance, and if we have to wait another seven months and the start of the World Cup in Australia to know what it truly meant in terms of global rugby power, a little provisional glory is surely England's due.

The coach, Clive Woodward, said before the game that he welcomed this chance to prove that his team didn't necessarily wither on foreign fields, and what happened here gave him rather more than his first Grand Slam triumph. It bestowed the ultimate coaching satisfaction of a performance perfectly conceived and executed. England were relentless and their best player, ignored bizarrely by the official adjudicators who, perhaps by Pavlovian reflex, went again to the Great Accumulator Jonny Wilkinson, was Lawrence Dallaglio.

He lost the captaincy in a brainstorm of misjudgement off the field four years ago ­ but not the capacity to play the international game with a craft and a buttoned-down passion which quietened the Lansdowne Road Roar and put him in a class of penetration and street nous all of his own.

The official leader, Martin Johnson, generated his usual physical authority ­ and a smouldering, tunnelled ambition which no less than four times brought a churlish refusal to move his team 20 yards down the touchline for an official presentation which wouldn't have required the Irish president, Mary McAleese, to run out of red carpet before shaking hands with the Irish team. That set a tone of English belligerence of almost Cromwellian roughness, but if Johnson drew up the agenda on the field, it was Dallaglio who attended most sharply to the business.

When Richard Hill worked acutely at the base of the Irish scrum and flicked up the ball, Dallaglio went in for the eighth-minute try which landed heavily on Irish hearts and announced a cutting edge that was never truly countered. Dallagio probed for Irish weakness with an unerring instinct. He was part surgeon, part marauder, and in the end all of Ireland must have yearned for him to give the spirit of their nation a little peace.

Later, Woodward talked about the former captain's response to the "motivation" of his removal to the bench in recent internationals, but that might have been a coaching confection that went a little too far. Dallaglio, like all the great performers in any branch of sport, provides his own impetus, and you could see it brimming to the surface as he stared into the middle distance at the sound of the Irish warrior anthem, "The Soldier's Song".

There were was a brief spell before half-time when Ireland's superbly gifted young captain, Brian O'Driscoll, saw his hope for fires in Irish bellies and large quantities of ice in their veins come briefly to life, but soon enough the flames were dwindling and the celestial barman had plainly gone a little too easy on the cold stuff. Fire and ice were replaced by lukewarm demoralisation.

Of course, England are easier to admire than to love. They are about as romantic as a heavy armour division. They wore down Ireland and it was only at the end that they indulged in the kind of attacking flair which Ireland invested in so heavily just before the break with some beautiful running by the captain and his most exciting lieutenant, the stirring full-back Geordan Murphy.

At this point only defence of the highest quality could have shut down the threat, and it was provided by replacement Kyran Bracken and full-back Josh Lewsey with tackles on Murphy and Denis Hickie. If the Irish had struck then, if England had given an inch, there might have been the scent of a match because if the Irish in the end couldn't live with the power of England, and the incisive intelligence of Dallaglio, surely few victims of a 36-point defeat have displayed such thrilling possibilities.

As England ran and passed the ball with something close to abandon in the last minutes, with Mike Tindall and replacement Dan Luger mercilessly running in tries, the latter aided by a pass from Jason Robinson which was another statement of total mastery, O'Driscoll limped to the touchline. He never said that beating England and gaining the first Irish Grand Slam since the days of Jackie Kyle was anything in the way of a likelihood. He merely offered the thought that if Ireland worked on a few intangibles, and produced the very best of themselves, there might just be a little thunder in the air.

When that best of this Ireland is produced, we can be fairly certain, there will be a surge or two of the blood. The running of Murphy was a particular delight, and several times O'Driscoll revealed the turn of foot of a genuine thoroughbred.

But if the talent of these individuals was high, the yield of it was never going to be nearly enough. England were simply too strong, too relentless. They were making sure that they travel to the summer tour of Australia and New Zealand as unquestioned masters of Europe, and if there was the recurring shadow of Wilkinson's suspect shoulder which forced him off field after his standard harvest of 15 points, all else was in the best possible shape in England's rugby world.

Whether it is one which can finally push back its boundaries and embrace the World Cup is the last question mark against the team built by Woodward. In the meantime, though, he is entitled to celebrate a performance that utterly laid waste the ebullient city of Dublin. Great men, after all, have gone to their graves trying to pull off the feat.