IT is, as the man said, like deja vu all over again. Two eras of Irish professional rugby have already been defined by the result of games against Argentina, and the course of the third one will be decided upon by the very same criteria. In attempting to look forward, it might be instructive to take a peak back. . .

ARGENTINA 28, IRELAND 24
Lens, Wednesday 20 October 1999

Before Lens, Irish professional rugby was a mere infant. The Paris accord, the agreement that opened the sport up to professionalism, may have been signed in August 1995 but four years on, the concept in Ireland was barely crawling.

At the start of the 1997/98 season, each of the country's four provinces had been allowed contract 10 full-time players and 20 part-timers. The following year, the one immediately preceding the World Cup, the IRFU decided to up that to 21 full-time players per province but while they were pumping money into the provincial set-up, the international scene, in complete contrast to the current situation, was the poor relation of the setup.

Warren Gatland tells a story back then of trying to buy a new scrum machine for his team. It was a far from easy process.

First, the Irish coach had to fly to London himself to find the machine and price it. He then had to arrange a meeting with IRFU treasurer John Lyons, on his return, to persuade him to hand over a cheque for 3,000.

Only when the man holding the purse strings was satisfied with the coach's case, was the purchase ratified.

But that was pre-Lens. After Ireland's 28-24 defeat to Argentina in the northern French city, IRFU eyes were opened and attitudes changed almost immediately. It just goes to show that embarrassment, and blazer embarrassment in particular, can be quite a strong emotion.

"Before the defeat in Lens, the IRFU were putting most of their financial resources into getting Irish players who were playing in England back into the domestic rugby, " says Donal Lenihan, Irish manager back in 1999. "After the defeat to Argentina, there was a realisation that the international game was the shop window in terms of sponsorship and other income and all of a sudden the international team became a priority."

In the 2000/01 season, more than 7 million was committed to player and management costs for the provincial and international teams but the figure for the following season was 11 million plus. That's a 36 per cent increase in player and management costs in 12 months. Priorities had definitely changed, as did the management team, after a little while. Warren Gatland signed a two-year contract in April 2000 but his era came to an end before his deal did when he was replaced by Eddie O'Sullivan on the night of the long knives in November 2001.

And as the new coach reaped the benefit of a player base increasingly used to professionalism, results on the pitch became more consistent and the IRFU ploughed every possible resource towards the national side. In the year prior to the 2003 World Cup in Australia, 14 million was spent on overall player and management costs, double the figure at the time when Gatland was in charge. O'Sullivan was even given a contract extension before the tournament began.

The days of petty arguments over scrum-machines were long in the past.

IRELAND 16, ARGENTINA 15
Adelaide, Sunday 26 October 2003

By the time the game in Adelaide against Argentina came around, losing was simply not an option. Having invested millions of extra euro in the national squad since their defeat to Argentina in 1999, defeat to the very same opposition four years later would not have been acceptable. The contrast was just too sharp. "It we'd have lost that game you could some up my tenure as a complete 'gone nowhere' situation, " the Irish coach is quoted as saying in Brendan Fanning's recently published book From There to Here . . .

Irish Rugby in the Professional Era. "So we'd lost in Lens and even with forewarning, we'd lost again in 2003. Now you could argue the toss, but it would have been very hard. . . The bottom line would have been that we failed to get to the quarter-finals of the World Cup."

No surprise then that the Adelaide match between the sides will go down as one of the tetchiest and nerve-wracking games in rugby history. The tone was set by O'Sullivan who, according to those around him in the Irish set-up, was like a man possessed in the build-up to the game and he allowed his nerves to transmit themselves to the rest of his squad. After what has been described as a pre-match meeting with a "sick" atmosphere by those who attended it, Ireland stuttered about the place for most of the 80 minutes at the famous old cricket ground and were it not for Alan Quinlan's superbly taken first-half try, during which he broke his collarbone, what must have been O'Sullivan's worst nightmare would have manifested itself in reality. As it was, a five-point turnabout from 1999 was more than enough to legitimise all the IRFU's extra investment in the national side. Even the subsequent defeats to Australia in the final pool game and France in the quarter-finals didn't seem to matter. Argentina had been beaten and the Union had removed a significant embarrassing monkey from their backs.

So with their investment justified, the IRFU decided after the competition to continue down the same track. The only fall out from the World Cup stemmed from the views of fitness coach Mike McGurn. The Fermanagh man stated that the Irish team weren't at their optimum fitness heading into the competition and that they needed to be granted a longer pre-season training period if they were ever to compete against the world's top teams.

The bizarre thing was that he was suspended for his comments but after having been reinstated to his position early in 2004, the IRFU decreed that every member of the international squad would be allowed 10-weeks of pre-season training from the following summer onwards. From a position four years previous where the national team was seen as second in the food chain, there was no doubt who the IRFU's primary concern were now.

The investment in player and management continued. A figure that tallied 14 million in 2002/03 had reached 22 million by the start of the 2006/07 season and with some degree of success on the pitch, the sponsors started to come out of the woodwork. The Irish rugby team could count on sponsors such as O2, AIB, Guinness, Coca-Cola, Ford, HP, Paddypower, Elverys, Powerade, Kelloggs and even Wolf Blass, the official wine supplier, of all things, to the IRFU. On the back of this success, as much as anything achieved on the field, O'Sullivan was handed a fouryear contract extension before the World Cup with the express IRFU wish to keep doing what he was doing. No alarms and no surprises would do just fine.

IRELAND v ARGENTINA
Paris, Sunday 30 September 2007

So what will the next four years bring? Triple Crown success and Grand Slam triumph? Increased IRFU investment in the national side? Sponsors queuing up to be associated with Irish Rugby?

Or a return to the days when the head coach had to argue over the purchase of a scrum machine? Sackings and pay-offs?

Today's result will affect how every one of these questions are answered. Victory, with all the trimmings and the disturbing performances of the last three weeks might just be forgotten.

Victory without qualification and the coach might just hang onto his job. Defeat, and everything could change. The only certainty right now is that Argentina, once again, will have a big hand in dictating the future of Irish rugby.