Ireland have a hard road to travel yet

You could tell how much it meant to the All Blacks by their reaction after the full-time whistle. Where four years ago there would have been a few perfunctory high fives, this time there was real elation. In part this was down to the baggage they brought into the game and their desire to kick-start a new era. But it was also a compliment to the Irish team, for they had given the Kiwis a real scare and made them dig deeper than they've had to in a long, long time.

As their smiles illuminated darkening skies and they continued to hug each other on the slow trek to the dressingroom, a beaming Anton Oliver looked up to somebody in the stand and pointed. You could see this was big.

"The Irish are a great team," said the All Blacks skipper in the bowels of the main stand, long after the crowds had cleared away, delight still etched across his rugged Kiwi features.

Laughing now a little incredulously, like the man in the straitjacket who no one will believe, he continued: "I keep saying this and no one seems to believe me, not back home and not even their own people. Ireland are a great team. The passion and the team spirit they bring to the game are hard things to nullify."

In his first game as All Blacks captain, his first crisis point arrived shortly after half-time when Oliver regrouped his troops under the posts as Humphreys lined up the conversion to Denis Hickie's try at 21-7.

"At 21-7 I was thinking, 'shit'. But I said 'let's stay task-focused. We can't get emotionally carried away with the situation. We had to go down and play our game."

Significantly perhaps, Canterbury had faced a similar half-time deficit in the national provincial final before scoring a 30-point barrage against Otago a fortnight ago. One of their 10 players in this line-up, number eight Scott Robertson, maintained he'd never been on the receiving end of such an opening blitz.

"For the first 20 minutes they couldn't do anything wrong. It was just a one-way start and we were going the other way. We had to show our resolve today. It was our first game together and for us to come back in that kind of atmosphere and that kind of intensity makes me proud. I'm proud to be an All Black today."

For the expatriate Kiwi and adopted Irishman, Warren Gatland, there was pride tinged with sorrow, and another reminder that while the road to, say, sixth best in the world is a long and hard one, the next journey into the elite top five is harder still.

"I'm really proud of the way we defended and the way we scored three tries against them, which doesn't happen to the All Blacks too often. We could have scored a couple more as well. We're just disappointed. We felt that we had it there and we let it slip away."

His old mate John Mitchell had complimented Gatland on the way Ireland had played, but now, said the Irish coach: "We want to take that extra step to the next level. We want to go to that next stage."

The bottom line, as Keith Wood admitted, was that "New Zealand were able to take the pace of the game up to another level and we weren't able to cope. We have a lot of work to do, it's as simple as that."

For Gatland, the way the game panned out re-enforced his belief that New Zealand players perform at a far higher level of intensity. The sheer pace of rugby at Super 12 and provincial level gives them a superior stepping stone to international rugby than the European Cup or the interpros does for our boys. And yet, and yet . . .

This was a relatively seasoned Irish team compared to a relatively raw All Blacks unit, and whereas the latter were ring rusty Ireland were on the crest of a wave. Even allowing for the clear signs that Ireland were overcooked and running on empty by the end, it raises the question: Will Ireland ever beat them? Indeed, will Ireland ever have such a good opportunity again?

The scary thing is that this All Black team is sure to improve and will be quite a force come the 2003 World Cup. But Gatland believes the same applies to Ireland.

"Most of the team, with the exception of the two older guys in the tight five, will still be together for a few years. We've got to make sure we keep taking good care of our players and that we keep getting more opportunities against these sides. I think we're going to keep getting better as well."