IRELAND'S love affair with the World Cup is alive and well. It took the class of 2015 just one match to promote themselves to one of the favourites for a quarter final place alongside the elite of the game - with the backing of one of their beaten opponents.

“You outplayed us today and you thoroughly deserved the win,” Darren Sammy told Ireland captain William Porterfield. If you continue to play good cricket you will continue to win matches.”

Sammy, the former West Indies captain, interrupted an after-match interview with Porterfield to congratulate his former team-mate at the MCC Young Cricketers.

“We are ranked above them but they showed us how to chase down a big target and credit must be given not only to the way they played today but also in previous World Cups. They keep showing they are cut above the rest of the rest of the Associate nations and if they keep playing like this they could go far in this tournament.”

It was a sixth one-day international win over a Full Member, their fourth at a World Cup and the third time in the tournament they have chased over 300 to win the game. No other country in World Cup history has done it more than once!

The most famous will remain the, still, record winning second innings total of 329 to beat England in Bangalore in 2011, but while the first ODI win against Pakistan at the 2007 World Cup was entirely unexpected, yesterday's victory in the sleepy town of Nelson - the Sunshine capital of New Zealand - on the tip of the South Island barely registered a ripple.

It was 12 th v 8 th in the world rankings but it was ripe for an upset with West Indies having left two of their best players at home because of a dispute which led to an aborted tour in India and a 23-year-old captain in charge. Ireland took full advantage of the turmoil with an all-round performance which National Coach Phil Simmons described as “probably the best he has ever seen in his time as Ireland coach”.

The bowlers may have conceded 304 in the 50 overs, after Porterfield won the toss, but Sussex captain Ed Joyce, described it as “tremendous effort” on such a small ground. He then went out and backed up his comments with a classy 84 and received wonderful support from Paul Stirling and Niall O'Brien, the latter with 79 not out, seeing Ireland home with 25 balls to spare.

It could have been an even more emphatic margin but for the loss of three wickets within 20 runs of the winning post, but the depth of this Irish batting line-up - the top seven have scored 28,000 first class runs - ensured no panic and John Mooney, just as he had done against England four years earlier, hit the winning runs.

O'Brien, who ran out his brother Kevin in the closing stages, became the first Ireland player to score 500 World Cup runs while Stirling reached 50 for the first time in an ODI since his century against Pakistan in May 2013, 12 innings previously.

A reluctant speaker, it was joked that Stirling missed out on a second World Cup century to try and avoid the post-match man of the match interview but despite's Joyce's dream-like fluency and O'Brien's flowing strokeplay, the adjudicator chose the Ireland top scorer for seeing off the new ball and finishing with nine fours and three sixes in his 84-ball innings.

The first surprise of the day was the respective team selections - and here too Simmons got one over his country-mates as he played what proved to be a winning hand.

While the West Indies went with four fast bowlers and not one specialist spinner - although Sulliman Benn was reported to have picked up a pre-match injury - Ireland chose George Dockrell and, for his first game against a top eight side, Donemana's Andrew McBrine.

Dockrell may have taken three of the wickets as the West Indies collapsed to 87 for five but McBrine, as he done so often this winter, let no one-down and did everything but take a wicket, conceding just 26 runs in his 10 overs to put the favourites on the back foot.

It was Sammy - sent to the Press conference by the West Indies management to apologise for his foul-mouth outburst, picked up on the stump microphone, during his innings of 89 - and Lendl Simmons who led the recovery with a stand of 154 for the sixth wicket but although Mooney ended the stand, the Ireland bowlers could not contain the carnage at the end.

When Andre Russell came in and hit 27 off 13 balls, West Indies had hit 124 off the last 10 overs and 198 off the last 20. Still it wasn't enough as Ireland's perfectly paced reply put another dent in the ICC's hopes of keeping Associate nations of future World Cups.

This Ireland team is here to stay.