IN THE SPRING of 2003, Marcus Horan, the Irish loosehead prop of the day, and Martin Johnson, the England captain, got chatting about Croke Park, the bastion of the Gaelic Athletic Association on Dublin’s Northside. Johnson said that he’d caught a glimpse of the stadium and that it looked seriously impressive. Horan, from GAA stock in Clare, said it was probably the greatest stadium in the entire world, a place where legends were made, a sacred patch of ground.
“Do you think we’ll ever get a chance to play there?” asked Johnson.
“Ah, there’s history, Johnno,” Horan replied. “We haven’t a hope.”
Horan, nor anybody else, couldn’t have known it at the time but a handful of years after that chat with Johnson, rugby was played at Croke Park.
The…