It’s celebrated as the greatest escape act in Australian rugby history but, 22 years on, the pain from the 1991 World Cup quarter-final remains in Ireland.

The Wallabies return to the scene of the crime – Lansdowne Road – on Sunday morning (AEDT) when they meet the Irish in an intriguing encounter for both rebuilding sides.

This time, Ewen McKenzie will be the Australian coach instead of beefy scrum anchor, Rob Edgerton is team manager not winger, and a state of the art 53,000-seat stadium has replaced the famed terraces at the legendary Dublin ground.

It promised to be the boilover of the ’91 tournament as a teaming home crowd went absolutely wild in delirious joy when lanky back-rower Gordon Hamilton outsprinted David Campese to score and put Ireland ahead 18-15 with three minutes to play.

The Wallabies, with Campese in the form of his career, had been overwhelming favourites but the Irish forwards – dubbed “very skilled lunatics” by Australian flanker Simon Poidevin – had produced one of the most spirited performances in the nation’s history.

Captain Philip Matthews set the tone by upper-cutting Willie Ofahengaue from the kick-off and raw-boned lock Neil Francis immediately joined in the fracas.

But at the end of the match it was the Australians’ “cold-blooded resolve”, as Francis recalls it, that saw them steal victory from the jaws of defeat.

For all the Wallabies’ relief, it stands as the defining moment of Ireland’s amateur rugby history.

Wallabies playmaker Michael Lynagh, captaining the side with Nick Farr-Jones injured, settled his troops behind the goal line and calmly plotted a course to hit back and win in the seconds that remained.

What followed was almost poetry. Kick-off long, lineout on the Irish 22, rolling maul, scrum, looping backline move, and try to Lynagh in the corner as he scooped up a flukey Campese pass.

Silence.

The crowd that had erupted just minutes before sat in numb, disbelieving silence.

“Flattest feeling ever,” Hamilton recalled this week. “I’ll never forget that moment – the deathly silence.

“We were all completely shocked and flattened by it.”

But not all were flattened.

In a continuation of the nation’s reputation for celebrating glorious failure, there were post-match smiles and fist-pumping from rookie players who claimed a moral victory.

“The dressing room was cut into half,” Francis told AAP. “There were guys who were absolutely devastated beyond words. I was crying my eyes out. I couldn’t get over it.

“And then the other half in the team were exhilarated that we had come that close, that we were leading coming into injury time.

“It didn’t seem to bother them. They were relieved.”

Francis finds it hard to forgive young halfback Rob Saunders who gifted Australia field position from the restart after the team huddle had just stressed the importance of clearing downfield.

“Saunders (had been) looking up at his girlfriend in the stands, out of the program like, no idea what he was going to do next, no sense of recognition that this was a chance of a lifetime to knock out one of the greatest rugby union teams of all-time,” he said.

They remain raw wounds too for Francis’s second-row partner Donal Lenihan, a popular former Ireland captain who also toured Australia as a British Lions player (1989) and manager (2001).

“Some of the younger players, all they wanted to do was go and get an Australian tracksuit or jersey,” he told AAP. “We were within touching distance … and they didn’t fully appreciate it.

“At one stage I was going to get up and say something and (veteran prop) Des Fitzgerald just grabbed me at the right time because in my eyes it wasn’t the place to be celebrating.

“We felt it was an opportunity lost.

“At least Irish rugby has moved on. In those days we were very good at celebrating glorious failure.”

The Irish were also good at celebrating Australia’s success over the next fortnight as the Dublin-based Wallabies – containing half a side of players with Irish heritage – became their adopted team.

Bob Dwyer’s men produced their best performance of the tournament in the semi-final with Campese orchestrating a 16-6 semi-final shutout of the All Blacks at Lansdowne Road.

With the support of both the Irish and Scottish teams which attended the final at Twickenham, the Wallabies grinded out a 12-6 triumph over England in the final.

The one try in the final was scored by McKenzie but awarded to fellow prop Tony Daly.

“The general feeling among the people was that we were one point from being world champions,” Lenihan said.