Why even the best of Ireland will probably not be good enough to overcome mighty All Blacks
MY one and only experience of playing the All Blacks was 25 minutes I’ll never forget... whether I want to or not.
It was my second cap, two years after the first, and we were 41-0 down when I came on (below) for Kevin McLaughlin. Things didn’t get any better from there, the final score infamously reading 60-0.
It was rugby from a different planet, those Kiwi teams between their World Cup triumphs among the best we’ve ever seen.
I’ll always remember the pace with which they played, next level stuff. It was probably no coincidence that the closest I came to a big tackle was on Romain Poite, the referee.
The feeling after, even against the All Blacks, is one of shellshock. How can you lose a
Test 60-0? That it seems incomprehensible now shows the progress Ireland have made in a few short years. They’re in a very different place now and, ahead of Saturday’s mouth-watering quarter-final, I think a very different place to where we found ourselves at this stage four years ago.
The mindset you have to nurture in international rugby is such that, even as we lost the players we did, I still thought we’d be fine against Argentina. Better than fine. But looking back now it’s clear that we were decimated, few teams could have coped with the injuries that hit us that week. It was ripping out the spine of a good side.
But while there’s never a good time to face the All Blacks, to have reached this stage of the World Cup with 31 fit players — Jack Conan’s early departure and Bundee Aki’s
ban notwithstanding — is a stark contrast to the position we found ourselves in.
I saw Johnny Sexton talking about the emotional energy expended in the week prior against France building into that Argentina defeat and it’s a point I’d echo entirely. Again, it stings to say as I was involved, but essentially we had our Japan moment. Just as Ireland flagged this time the week after beating Scotland, there’s no doubt having such a mental hurdle to overcome in the last pool game drained us for the quarters.
This time, having beaten Russia and then fairly clinically disposed of Samoa, there’s the required sense of business as usual heading into the knockouts. When you reach this stage, there are areas of the game that are non-negotiable.
The set-piece needs to function and the defence, which has been strong, needs to go up a level. Errors need to be at a minimum and when one comes, it needs flushed from the system.
Too often of late it’s been a case of layering mistake upon mistake and when you start doing that against New Zealand it’s like a drop of blood in shark-infested waters.
The extras that you need are in a similar vein to November’s victory in Dublin and Jacob Stockdale’s winning try. We need to see not just anything and everything that Joe Schmidt has left in his bag of tricks but all of it executed to perfection.
Ireland could do this, play their best game of the year and still lose — that’s what the All Blacks are capable of. That, though, is World Cup rugby. You have to beat them some time.