RUGBY AUTUMN INTERNATIONALS:IRELAND COULDN'T make history but this, first and foremost, was a fantastic rugby match, vindication of everything Paddy O'Brien and the IRB are trying to do with the game and applied by simply the best team in the world against an Irish side who gave it a good Irish go. But even very good, as they knew all along, was never going to be quite good enough.
Ireland needed to be better than that.
When Declan Kidney bemoaned afterwards “it’s a pity we’re not playing them next week” one could understand exactly what he meant. In any sport, you only improve by pitting yourself against the best and right now these All Blacks are simply the best in the world, and by some distance.
Ireland could trace every score in the first half to mistakes they originally made in possession, which makes the video analysis rewarding but underlines that you have to be close to perfection, for no other team on the planet so ruthlessly punishes mistakes.
“The more we play against these guys the better we will be,” said Kidney. “Since June, what have we done? We’ve played them twice, Australia, South Africa. A lot of younger players have picked up an awful lot of game time against them.
“Just take Seánie Cronin for instance, what he’s done. You can’t buy experience, you have to build that up, you have to go through it, what it takes is time to get there.”
Kidney was reluctant to accept this performance had been encouraging. “I suppose it would give encouragement, but I think too much of them just to let them away with that. Then we go into the old things like ‘it was a great performance’. We’re too good a country to buy into that.
“We need to work on things ourselves. I don’t want to sound like a broken record. It’s in our own control, if you look at the turnovers, just getting a few simple things right. We put our defence under a lot of pressure. You guys probably know the stats better than I do. Was it 70-30 possession? We need to make it 50-50.”
As Kidney also pointed out, for much of the game four of the tight five had only 47 caps between them, much less than Donncha O’Callaghan’s 65, yet though more encouraging than the previous two Saturdays, it was also a little demoralising.
After all, you produce your best game in more than half a dozen outings and you still get beaten by 20 points at home. You withstand the kitchen sink treatment, come back at them to lead only to make a couple more mistakes and concede 21 points in 10 minutes either side of the interval. Championship minutes indeed. Bloody New Zealanders or All Blacks, they are just too bloody good.
The quality of their handling from one to 15, the speed with which they play and their finishing, is awesome. It’s interesting, too, how they are not as muscular or powerful looking as sides such as England or South Africa, or even Ireland. They are lithe sports animals and must have a different emphasis on aerobic or anaerobic fitness, and apparently do much more longer-distance running than their rivals. As they so often do in so many ways, the All Blacks keep adjusting perceived wisdom and keep setting the standards.
It helps, too, when you have a goal-kicker who can bisect the posts with a penalty or conversion from pretty much anywhere in the ground, and that includes row Z.
Has anybody ever seemed to have so much time on the ball or made the game look so ridiculously easy as Dan Carter? The key to much of this is the quick-fire ruck ball the All Blacks generate, and the key to that – aside from the footwork and strength of the ball carrier – is how seldom their carriers get isolated. Support trailers are almost clearing out before contact. This also means they only commit the barest minimum number of players to each breakdown and so they keep coming, and coming, in black wave upon black wave.
Ireland double-tackled superbly, preventing offloads and thereby keeping numbers in defence, and also pilfered five turnovers, with Cian Healy playing like an auxiliary backrower. Healy, O’Callaghan, Stephen Ferris and Jamie Heaslip were simply immense. They kept their shape superbly, although perhaps against such high quality opponents you need to emulate Ferris in taking more risks defensively.
Ferris and co won’t have been the first to have felt acute frustration at the way naughty boy Richie McCaw and his mates suddenly manage to concede more penalties when their line is under threat. Or the last. “It’s funny,” noted an unamused Ferris, “in the middle of the pitch you get quick ruck ball and then when you get near their line it slows down. And it’s the same old faces.”
And quite how Marius Jonker didn’t go back for a third successive penalty under the posts after Keith Earls had been denied by the TMO when tackled into touch-in-goal by Corey Jane just one phase later was mind-boggling.
Next week, a 2.30pm Sunday kick-off against Argentina – everybody’s favourite opposition – just won’t be the same. In beating Italy and losing 15-9 to France on Saturday night in their latest two-arm wrestles, Los Pumas have scored one try and conceded one.
“I suppose the adrenalin always flows more easily for these matches and it would still be flowing now in these press conferences,” admitted Kidney. “It’s an eight-day turnaround, which is no bad thing. They play France tonight, we’ll take a good look at that. They could defend differently, maybe from the outside in, cutting off a lot of things. New Zealand were inclined to give you soft shoulders on the outside which wed to today’s type of game.
“I’ve always said that as an Irish team we need to lean on what I think is one of our strengths, and that’s to think our way through a game. At times in this series we didn’t do that, in the South Africa match we were probably trying too much to play the way we played today. What we had to do was take a mix of both and then take a good look at Argentina, and play the way that is best to play them on that day.”
Alas, it won’t be like this. It takes two to tango.
IRELAND PAY HEAVY TOLL FOR COURAGEOUS DISPLAY
IRELAND HAVE paid a heavy toll for their exertions against the All Blacks, with Luke Fitzgerald, Rob Kearney and Rory Best all ruled out of next Sunday's meeting with Argentina at the Aviva Stadium, writes Gerry Thornley.
Leinster and Ulster have also been hit hard, with Fitzgerald and Best both ruled out for up to six weeks. Fitzgerald sustained medial ligament damage to his left knee, but although it’s the same knee which required an operation that sidelined him from last November until the start of this season, it is a different injury.
Best suffered a fractured cheekbone which will require an operation today. The prognosis on Kearney’s cartilage damage is less clear-cut, as he will undergo exploratory surgery this week to determine the extent of the injury, but he has been ruled out of the Argentinian game.
There was relief to learn that Brian O’Driscoll has merely suffered bruising to his shoulder, and given he is a quick healer the eight-day turnaround should also help his recovery. Likewise with Tommy Bowe and Gordon D’Arcy, who sustained calf strains. All will undergo rest and rehabilitation this week.
