Another one that got away

No rest for the wicked, and certainly the Irish players had little chance to sleep on or rest their wounds after the first Test. The night match was followed by wake-up calls at 6.0 the next morning (presuming they needed one) for an early flight to Auckland, where they arrived in their hotel at mid-day.

Paul O'Connell was the main casualty of the match, though the management were optimistic his bruised shoulder would not unduly hinder him this week. After a typically irreverent and full-on performance by the young lock, O'Connell had expressed his surprise at the experience.

"It was no tougher than an interpro, really."

Not all the Irish players might have shared his view. Brian O'Driscoll, leaning against the wall in the cold, spartan mixed zone between the two dressing-rooms on Saturday night, used one word to describe how he was feeling.

"Sore. Very tough game, yeah. A lot of possession but not a lot of points."

The chances at either end of the pitch come back to him in a blur.

"We didn't get our breaks, the bounce of the ball for us. Instead they get one at the other end and score a try off it when Simon slipped and the ball bounced the other way. And I got caught by Umaga by a fingernail. I got over for one and the boys say it was they who knocked it on.

"So we're disappointed again. If it was there in October it was really there for the taking this time. Another one that got away, it's becoming a cliché, unfortunately."

Yet there was plenty of sustenance in the performance as well.

"Defensively we were strong. Of the two tries they did get, the second was sloppy and the first one was a lapse in concentration and we didn't defend their set-piece well. We'd seen them do it before on the video and so to not close them is disappointing."

Of playing inside centre, O'Driscoll said: "I enjoyed it. A bit more ball and a lot more to do probably. Sometimes the pass can beat the man at 13, it's one on one, where it seems to be two on one and three on one at inside centre. It's more confined at 12 but I did enjoy trying to call more of the shots. You've got a closer relationship with 10, because of a closer proximity. So it's nice to vary your game, to see if you're up to it."

For Keith Gleeson, singled out by John Mitchell as "quite outstanding", the post-match feelings will have been especially mixed. Even the Aussie-reared openside, who's not exactly short of self-belief, wouldn't have known any more than the rest of us whether he was ready for that next step up. But, carrying on from a mutually beneficial season with Leinster, this trademark performance showed emphatically that he can.

"Yeah, I was delighted with myself. I guess for the last couple of years I've always asked myself 'can I play international rugby?' And I think at the end of the day 'yes I can'. So it's a starting point to build on for however long my career will be.

"I guess I felt I've been ready for the last year or two, and Leinster certainly gave me that opportunity, and it gave me great aim then to play for Ireland."

Yet it's tinged with a major scalp that got away.

"Disappointed is the feeling generally in there," he said, nodding slightly over his left shoulder five yards away to the door he'd just emerged from. "We gave it a lot but we didn't have the luck of the Irish and we missed a couple of kicks, and Geordan Murphy's try was out only by inches.

"But look, it's a great thing to build on for next week. As Keith Wood said in the changing room afterwards, we're not going to go up to Auckland and get stuffed up in Auckland. We've put down a gauntlet now and let's try and draw the series."

Eddie O'Sullivan described the battle between Gleeson and his counterpart Richard McCaw as "a great Gunfight at the OK Coral between the two opensides and they both got stuck into it".

"It was indeed, and very enjoyable at that and I hope there's many more years to come of it," Gleeson said. "He (McCaw) was certainly one of their players we had targeted beforehand as someone who is very good on the ground at getting in on our ball, so as much as possible I did try and keep him out of the game. Unfortunately," Gleeson added smiling, "I can't be everywhere he is and he can't be everywhere I am."

In what had seemed like a pointed criticism of the Warren Gatland era, Keith Wood commented at the post-match press conference: "At the time of the autumn match - and it's almost embarrassing to say this - but we didn't have a defensive structure to speak of and we've put a lot of work into it, and as I've said in the last couple of weeks it'll probably take us another year and a bit to get it up to speed."

New Zealand have recalled the Canterbury centre Mark Robinson and the Otago lock Simon Maling, while excluding Tana Umaga and Taine Randell, in an otherwise unchanged 22-man squad for next week's Test.