With less than an hour to go to the kick-off of the crunch group D Rugby World Cup match between Ireland and France in Paris, my heart tells me that Ireland will storm to an historic win, but my head tells me otherwise.

Specifically, I have serious concerns about the colour of the Ireland away strip, which is grey! Grey! Who is the idiot that decided on that colour? Grey is not a suitable colour for playing an agressive sport like Rugby, or indeed for playing any competitive sport. My wife, who is a colour analyst, tells me that grey is a relaxing colour and good for when you want to boost mental activity, but no way is it suitable for playing a competitive team sport.

Manchester United used grey as their away strip some years ago and suffered a disastrous run of results while wearing the strip. As soon as they changed from grey, they got back on winning ways.

The bad form shown by this excellent Irish team could well be due to choosing the wrong colour for their strip. I’m praying that this is not the case, but if Ireland lose tonight, I think the blame should be bourne by whoever is/are the dimwit/s who decided on grey as the colour.