It could hardly have been a better start for Ireland with an 82 point to 8 win over minnows Romania, despite the fact that the first try of the game was scored by the underdogs.
Two tries for Jonny sexton showed his wellbeing after being absent from the team since March which was another major positive.
The Mastercard sponsored Player of the Match in the stadium in Bordeaux was Peter O’Mahony and while not wishing to take anything away from the Munster star, to our eye Bundee Aki may feel as though this was a trophy that might have been adorning his mantlepiece.
There were no injuries reported after the game which is going to be a key part of this campaign as well.
There were reports from among fans attending both the Ireland and the England Argentina games of challenges with transport and gaining access to the stadia, as well as a lack of drinking water but World Rugby has undertaken a review of these with a view to getting things right for next weekend’s round of games when ireland will travel to Nantes for the game against Tonga.
The tournament opened in Paris on Friday night with an attendance in the Stade de France of 78,690 and a highest TV audience of the year of 15.4 million for the opening win over New Zealand on TF1.
We will update on viewing figures from the RTÉ and Virgin Media weekend broadcasts during the week.
There is a shared broadcast sponsorship package across the two channels with Vodafone leading with Team of Us sting ahead of KFC which somewhat disappointingly seemed to reuse one that they had also run during last year’s FIFA World Cup.
Bank of Ireland, Vodafone, Aldi and Guinness were among the IRFU partner brands that were prominenty featured during the ad breaks.
Irish Rugby’s media crew went along with the team to a local school in Bordeaux where the conversion of local fans, at least on a temporary basis kept up the feelgood factor.
