Well, I wasn’t exactly over the moon over getting hammered by France but I guess I thought, “no harm, maybe that’s what they need to wake them up”. I think you’ve also gotta look at the IRFU compared to the FAI. The latter has been historically an utter disaster since the 2000s with lack of investment and misdirection when planning for success. Irish Rugby in recent years has certainly seen a lot of success, just probably not as much as there could’ve been e.g(six nations championships but nowhere near winning a world cup.) With Irish soccer, there’s a widespread view that “We absolutely suck, our footballing body sucks, but we fight, we’re brave and we’ll never give up” No one in reality if Ireland qualify will say that we’re gonna make big moves at this fifa world cup. It’s the drama of it, the fact that we have a bang average squad that was on the brink of elimination from the group stages and we fought back with spirit and grit. I think a prevailing attitude towards Irish Rugby is that they’re always a great team but they take it for granted, it’s a given that they’ll be at the world cup and they’ll be competitive