Very few landscapes offer as much scope for bending the truth as the American Wild West but the old Five Nations may give it a run for its money and among the myths routinely offered up as unvarnished truth is the one about how the Parc des Princes was a sort of overpopulated ‘Boot Hill’ for so many Irish players’ careers down the years.

The reality isn’t quite so dramatic.

Ireland played France 12 times in the Parc between 1974 and 1996 and, in all that time, only three players — the flankers Don Whittle and Paul Hogan as well as out-half Derek McAleese — started and finished their international careers in the Parisian stadium on one and the same traumatic afternoon.

Another six Irishmen did play their last senior international game at the venue in that era but three of them were well into their 30s and no-one would argue that Fergus Slattery, Ginger McLoughlin, or Terry Kingston hadn’t put in praiseworthy shifts in the green jersey before their numbers came up.

None of that is to say that Ireland didn’t suffer there. They did. McAleese and Hogan’s one shot at Test rugby was a 44-12 defeat in 1992 when France scored seven tries and Ireland none. Whittle got off lightly in comparison, the try-count stopping once it hit 5-0. Both must have felt re-enactments of the Little Big Horn but some survived the slings and the arrows.

Moss Keane, Phil Orr and David Humphreys were among the 10 players who went on to build memorable Irish careers from a debut on Rue du Commandant-Guilbaud in that 22-year stretch, but none of those journeys proved so fraught to so many Irish careers as a day in Bologna in December 1997 which has all but faded from history.

Ireland and Italy inhabited very different worlds at the time. With so many of the Ireland players playing in England, it must have seemed only logical that the squad should stay in Richmond and train in Sunbury. Even the coach, Brian Ashton, was English although his six-year contract wouldn’t last more than one.

Ireland had already lost to the Italians that same calendar year, the 37-29 loss at Lansdowne Road proving fatal for Murray Kidd’s tenure, and if that doesn’t give a sense of a totally different time and place then consider the fact that the Bologna game would be shown live on the last ever Sports Stadium programme on RTÉ.

It seems crazy now — given the Azzurri’s lamentable run of 19 Six Nations games without a victory and ahead of Ireland’s latest visit — that any trip to Italy could prove so damaging to so many. And yet, of the XV that started that day, Kevin Nowlan, Niall Hogan, David Erskine and Dylan O’Grady would never play senior rugby for their country again.

For O’Grady it would be his only cap and Barry Coughlan, writing in these very pages on the game, pinpointed all four and many others for less-than-satisfactory performances. Rugby, he wrote, wasn’t so much a funny old game anymore as far as Ireland was concerned as much as a sick joke, and he warned, presciently, that wholesale changes in personnel were required.

Not that it changed much.

Ashton’s first Five Nations had already delivered another wooden spoon to the IRFU’s offices and his second would too. Italy looked in much better shape. They welcomed Ireland to the Stadio Renato Dall’Ara five days before Christmas on the back of news a month earlier that they would finally be admitted to an expanded Six Nations after the 1999 World Cup.

“It’s a dream that only a few years ago we’d never have thought could come true,” said the Italian rugby federation president Giancarlo Dondi at the time.

“It’s down to the results which we’ve achieved. And it’s recognition of the great deal of hard work which we have put into reaching the right standard.”

Jeez, but they had some players back then. The starting pack was a wizened old bunch that boasted 348 caps at a time when there were far fewer opportunities to earn them. Diego Dominguez and Alessandro Troncon made for a superb half-back combo while Marcello Cuttita and Paulo Vaccari would end their careers with almost 50 tries between them.

Dondi made great play of the 35,000 registered players Italy had and the effort being made in schools. Georges Coste, their French head coach, spoke with confidence of another 15 youngsters in the system who could add to the existing squad but there were fears even then that this was a side too old to walk through the newly-opened doors with the sort of zip they once had.

They weren’t quite over the hill but the crest was close.

A side that beat France and Ireland in ’97 went on to take care of Scotland and lose out narrowly to Wales and England the following year. But by 1999 they were shipping hidings to the Scots and the Welsh — even Ireland managed to beat them — and both South Africa and New Zealand hit them for 101 points before the century ended.

Their golden era was already over, Ireland’s had yet to begin.

Email: brendan.obrien@examiner.ie Twitter: @byBrendanOBrien