We must show we’ve learned lessons to see off All Blacks, insists Best
AND so Ireland are back at their most familiar of hurdles. A seventh World Cup quarter-final with a record that reads played six, lost six.
Few, too, will have been as challenging as what’s to come in Tokyo on Saturday. Facing the All Blacks, the back-to-back world champions and favourites for a three-peat, will be a marked difference when compared to their last two attempts to break the glass ceiling when they entered contests with Wales and Argentina as relatively strong favourites.
Many of Ireland’s key leaders, the likes of Johnny Sexton, Conor Murray, Keith Earls and Rob Kearney, were there for both. As, of course, was skipper Rory Best, now entering a stretch where he knows his next loss will mark the end of a storied career.
Looking back four and eight years after captaining the side to victory over Samoa on Saturday, Best admits that in past failures a sense of over-confidence perhaps crept into the group.
Having fallen flat against Japan after their last positive performance, the Ulsterman has warned they can leave no stone unturned in this week of preparation.
“Hopefully we’ll win which would be different from the last two World Cups, that would be nice,” he joked when asked what this team could do to separate itself from the quarter-final curse.
“In the last two World Cups, we’ve looked back after quarter-finals and went, ‘Do you know what? We just weren’t quite where we thought we were’.
“We rolled through two pool stages where we didn’t lose a game and probably looking back, maybe we were over-confident. It’s hard to know.
“I think that you have to try to prepare. We know that it’s knockout and after the Japan game, it’s important we’ve learned lessons.
“I think it’s really important that we look back to that Japan week coming off the back of a good performance against Scotland and it’s got to be all about rugby.
“We’ll enjoy a little bit of down time whenever it’s there but ultimately it’s about going to a quarter-final and winning it because