IRELAND U20S’ BONUS-POINT victory over England in Bath on Friday night could scarcely have been more uplifting, the mood accentuated by scenes of celebration between out-half Tom Wood and his parents after the final whistle.

Trust Keith Wood to have spawned an out-half: few forwards in the history of the game have ever been so proficient with the boot.

The former Ireland hooker was picked up by the broadcast in the stand at The Rec with his English wife, Nicola, in a compilation of cutaways to famous parents, the rest of which had kids playing in white. That the reception which greeted Wood’s face appearing on the big screen was as loud as the others told its own story.

Wood’s decisive try against England in 2001 is central to the tapestry of the countries’ rugby rivalry over the past quarter of a century: no stirring promotional montage of Ireland-England moments from the Six Nations era would feel complete without it.

What a score it was, too: a five-metre lineout from Wood to Mick Galwey, who pops it back to his Munster teammate Anthony Foley; Foley then tees up Wood on the peel-around, who targets Neil Back’s inside shoulder and steamrolls the English openside with the kind of demonic energy that Ireland will today require in Twickenham.

Easily forgotten with the passing of time is that there was still well over an hour to play in a pulsating, incident-packed game.

Never forgotten will be Peter Stringer’s second-half tap tackle on Dan Luger, for example. The English right winger’s line-break from deep was actually the fault of Ireland captain Wood, who perhaps showed too much ‘intent’ in shooting out of the defensive line and leaving a gap into which Luger exploded at speed, the line at his mercy.

Stringer, who would repeat the trick on Jason Robinson during a famous Irish victory at Twickehnam three years later, produced a miraculous ankle-tap at full stretch from behind which felled Luger, who was surely planning his celebration, and allowed Ireland to scramble back and reset.

When the full-time whistle sounded, England were Six Nations champions but had their hands on their heads: for the third year in succession, they had been denied the Grand Slam at the final hurdle. In five games, Clive Woodward’s side had scored 229 points, 29 tries, and had a points differential of +149. But second-placed Ireland had enjoyed the last laugh.

“It is impossible for me to believe that any side in the history of sport has felt so empty at being declared the best,” Neil Back would tell the Daily Mirror later that week. While crediting Ireland for a “deserved” win, the Leicester back row was also scathing in his assessment of Kiwi referee Paul Honiss, some of whose decisions he described as “absolutely ludicrous” and leaving him “baffled”.

Honiss himself was baffled in the immediate post-match when, as the trophy presentation was prepared for England, Ireland captain Wood approached him and asked if his side would receive runner-up medals.

Hey, it was a different time.

Indeed, it was actually October. The outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease in Britain had dictated that Ireland’s fixtures against Scotland, Wales and England all be pushed back from the spring.

England had, in essence, wrapped up the title by April but had to wait six months for their Grand Slam tilt in Dublin. In between was a taxing Lions tour of Australia for which they were a bulk provider, a 2-1 series defeat which hadn’t gone especially well for many of Woodward’s stars. Their momentum had been further halted in October by injuries to Martin Johnson and Lawrence Dallaglio, who would have started against Ireland had the Six Nations been completed on schedule.

Ireland, meanwhile, had made an excellent start to their campaign half a year earlier, Rob Henderson’s hat-trick propelling them to a 41-22 victory over Italy in Rome and Brian O’Driscoll engineering a second successive victory over France.

After those February fixtures, though, Warren Gatland and co. were informed that Ireland might have to wait to continue their unlikely title tilt.

The Foot and Mouth epidemic across the water, and the outstanding importance of agriculture to the Irish economy, led the Fianna Fáil government to invoke their ‘Fortress Ireland’ plan, in which they imposed strict restrictions on travel to Britain and a ban on animal imports from across the water. Sport on grass and various community events were also shut down for almost two months.

While a few cases of the disease were found on farms in the north, it never strayed further south than a flock of sheep in County Louth.

In Britain, meanwhile, six million cattle, sheep, and pigs were culled. Mass funeral pyres for slaughtered animals became commonplace in the countrysides of England, Wales and Scotland. The British general election was delayed. Cheltenham Festival — the staging of which would become such a point of contention during the coronavirus outbreak 19 years later — was called off.

Ireland’s last Grand Slam had been in 1948, incidentally seven years after the country’s most recent Foot and Mouth outbreak. But the Round 2 victory over France in 2001 left the rugby public giddy: with England at home and trips to Cardiff and Murrayfield on the schedule, the Irish rugby public dared to dream.

The Ireland squad, meanwhile, were left giddy when the Wales game was the first to fall heading into March. This was six years into professionalism. S&C was broadly left to the individual. Ireland went on the piss and awaited further instruction.

They returned to camp to prepare for England, a fixture originally scheduled for Round 4 at Lansdowne Road. Gatland’s were staying at the Glenview Hotel and training at Greystones rugby club — until they weren’t. When IRFU officials Eddie Wigglesworth and Eddie Colman appeared days out from the game to converse with the head coach, the players could hear the pub calling their names once more.

A month into the Foot and Mouth crisis, the Round 5 fixture against Scotland inevitably went the same way. It was refixed, however, for September, and would become Ireland’s third game of the championship, to be followed by a trip to Wales and a potential title decider against England in Dublin.

A Lions tour and a pre-season later, Ireland landed in Edinburgh where Scotland were quick to remind us why we should never dream. Operating under the suspicion that Ireland had been spied upon at their Watsonians training base, Gatland made some curious selection decisions, dropping the likes of Alan Quinlan, Mick Galwey and Peter Stringer who had impressed during Ireland’s opening two victories.

The visitors shat the course and the fanciful notion of a Slam disintegrated with a 32-10 defeat, Girvan Dempsey’s late try sparing Ireland an even worse humiliation.

Freed of expectation, Ireland pumped Wales in Cardiff a week later, while the final-round victory over England had a pang of ‘what might have been’.

Of course, what might have been had the game taken place in the spring was a resounding England victory inspired by talismanic forwards Martin Johnson and Lawrence Dallaglio, with Ireland captain Keith Wood later noting that England were simply not the same team without them.

Ireland’s own leader, meanwhile, was central to their famous victory even before his ultimately decisive try.

By all accounts, Ireland’s training session on the eve of the fixture positively stunk. Consequently, captain Wood called a meeting with head coach Gatland, assistant coach Eddie O’Sullivan, and starting out-half David Humphreys. They convened in Gatland’s room at the Berkeley Court the night before the game and agreed on the most rudimentary of gameplans: Humphreys was to boot the leather off the ball and if he couldn’t find touch, he was to find English fullback Iain Balshaw, who O’Sullivan reckoned fancied himself a bit too much as a rugby footballer despite five tries in his last three Tests.

The plan worked. Ireland gobbled up Balshaw on each of his solo missions and, inspired by an early Wood try off a Warren Gatland-special strike play, they spoiled the English party.

Their first victory over England in seven and a half years proved the first of six that decade. It was captain Wood’s first and last win over the English, his try now part of the iconography of a rivalry which resumes in Twickenham today — on schedule.