Ireland's calling: a journey to the heart of a rugby powerhouse | Donald McRae

Ireland are favourites for the Six Nations and are serious contenders for the World Cup this year, with a spirit that transcends national boundaries. How have they done it? “It just wouldn’t happen today,” Willie John McBride says on a rainy morning at home in Ballyclare as he explains the vast differences between the gleaming powerhouse of Irish rugby today and a ramshackle sport which he only began playing at the age of 17. Four years later, in 1962, as McBride remembers, “I was in the Lions Test team. Remarkably, I survived.”McBride not only survived. At 78 he remains the godfather of Irish…