Ireland can beat All Blacks says lock
Goalkicking ace Owen Farrell says England need to raise their game to have any hope of beating the All Blacks – but Irish lock Iain Henderson fancies his chances.
Ireland have never beaten the All Blacks, but Henderson has been talking up their chances of breaking the drought when the teams clash in Chicago and Dublin in November.
Henderson, 24, was part of the Irieland team that celebrated its first test win in South Africa, despite losing the three-test series, 2-1. The Ulster lock said after the third test defeat in Port Elizabeth that Ireland now had their eye on toppling the All Blacks.
"One thing we can take from this is that as a side, even being a young side, we’ve made history once on this tour and there’s no reason why we can’t do it again.
‘‘No Irish team has ever beaten the All Blacks and I don’t see any reason why we can’t. We’ve got two opportunities to go and do it.’’
Ireland came close to upsetting the All Blacks in Dublin in 2013, but lost 24-22 to a last-gasp Ryan Crotty try.
But Farrell was more cautious about England’s chances of taking over the All Blacks’ No 1 world ranking despite helping lead England to a 3-0 series whitewash over Australia.
England were eighth in the World Rugby rankings when Australian Eddie Jones took over as head coach after their disastrous World Cup campaign.
They are unbeaten in Jones’ eight-match tenure and have moved up to second in the world rankings, but Farrell appreciated they had more work to do to knock world champions New Zealand off the top perch.
‘‘What we’ve done is a step in the right direction, but we have to back it up and keep improving because we’re not where we want to be,’’ he said.
‘‘Its’ been brilliant. We’ll enjoy this [series win in Australia] because it’s never been done before. We’re in a good place, but our goal is clearly to be the best, that’s what’s been said since we met up. .
‘‘To beat New Zealand we’ll probably have to start joining things up a little bit more.
‘‘There might be time we put little bits together, but there aren’t big patches of that yet so it’s about how we do that.’’