Kiwis show humility after defeat
Stadium on Saturday night. On another occasion he might have gathered Beauden Barrett’s grubber kick and scored at a crucial stage in the second half.
Peter O’Mahony’s last-gasp intervention to snatch the ball from Smith’s grasp summed up Ireland’s relentless, never-say-die attitude.
“He did well, didn’t he, to reach back and grab that,” Smith sighed.
“I was starting to get excited, but it just bounced up. Yeah, we made a few opportunities but just couldn’t capitalise on them.
“That’s footy. Sometimes you get the bounce of the ball and sometimes you don’t. I thought we were making progress the last few minutes, but you’ve got to give credit to the way the Irish boys defended and put us under a lot of pressure. They forced us into a few errors at times.”
Captain Kieran Read insisted that while the pace of the game was not as fast as the Rugby Championship or last year’s Lions series, the intensity and physicality matched both.
Steve Hansen pointed to his side’s indiscipline in a first half that was littered with so many silly penalty concessions that you wondered what it would take for referee Wayne Barnes to sin bin an All Blacks player.
“They held the ball and it felt like we were defending very well, but we kind of let that pressure off by giving away a silly penalty, and all of a sudden they have another free go, and that’s something that we’ll address going forward,” Whitelock added.
“Then obviously when we had the ball, making sure that we can really penetrate. They defended very well so full credit to them, they didn’t give us many opportunities and the ones we did get, we didn’t capitalise.
“I think the first half we probably tried too hard and that’s why I think our discipline at times let us down.
“You can’t expect it to be perfect every time, but with 10, 12 minutes to go, we took a shot which was good. You’ve got to give full credit to them. We threw a lot at them, especially in that last 20, and they defended well and didn’t let us attack.”