Bordeaux’s Chaban-Delmas will be the venue for Ireland’s opening games against Namibia and Georgia, but the arena is more used to hosting football matches than rugby, with Girondins-Bordeaux being the big draw in the Aquitaine region.

Nevertheless it has been the scene of six French championship finals and was used in the 1999 World Cup when France beat Namibia before that famous semi-final victory over the All Blacks.

Bordeaux seems a fitting location for Ireland to open their campaign considering the history shared with the region. It was here that the Earls landed after their flight in 1607. To this day the evidence of that union still exists in the vineyards and religious history of Aquitaine.

Examples of these are the Château Lynch-Bages or Château Léoville-Barton and the Irish seminary in Bordeaux which was built at the beginning of the 17th century by a young Irishman, Demetrius MacCarthy, and the Archbishop of Bordeaux, François de Sourdis.