Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
JAMIE: BELIEVE IT WHEN YOU SEA IT
IRELAND’S historic win over the All Blacks in Chicago back in 2016 had a ‘carnival atmosphere’, according to ex-captain Jamie Heaslip.
And he claims it was a sea of green that pushed Ireland to victory that day.
Speaking ahead of Saturday’s crunch clash with New Zealand, Heaslip recalled Ireland’s first ever win over the Kiwis.
“I just remember looking up during the warm-up and trying to take it in,” he said. “There was just this wall of green.
“There weren’t too many Kiwis about but there was so many Irish and they made a massive difference to us.”
Back in 2013, Ireland came within seconds of beating the All Blacks, but a Ryan Crotty try broke their hearts.
Heaslip admits that loss was playing on Irish minds when they faced off in Chicago, and they were determined not to let the game slip away again.
“In that middle 20 in the second half, New Zealand did what New Zealand do.
“Even if you get ahead they just hit another run of form, they start getting back into the game and getting that purple patch and you’re kind of drawing back on your memories of 2013 of them doing a similar thing and coming back into the game and wondering ‘how do you nip that in the bud?’.
“We had enough guys with experience to go ‘ok let’s get back to basics and just put one foot in front of the other and build momentum back in the game,’ and that’s what we did.
“We worked ourselves down into their field and worked that try for Robbie (Henshaw, inset) to go over and the crowd went absolutely mental, which just gave us another level to finish out the game.
“We got that initial adrenaline rush in the first 20 or 30 minutes where we got a real jump on them, but the crowd made so much difference to us.”
This weekend’s game will act as another benchmark of where Joe Schmidt’s young side are in terms of World Cup ambitions in 2019.
Former No8 Heaslip believes that with the monkey off their backs, this game will be more about Ireland’s standing among the sport’s elite. “Now that this whole ‘we’ve never beaten them’ thing is not a talking point anymore, it’s become ‘we’ve done it before, but can we beat the best in the world now?’.”
“I just think the squad that we have is even stronger than the squad we had two years ago, and as a stepping stone for putting ourselves in the right mind frame for winning the World Cup, this is a big step to take.
“If we meet New Zealand in the World Cup it’s either we’ve come second in our group or we won’t meet them until the final. It goes a long way if we can beat them again this weekend.”