Bundee Aki’s scowl during the haka on Friday night suggested a mental and physical readiness for the labours that lay ahead, perhaps betraying an impatience for the contest to begin. It wasn’t posturing or grandstanding for the cameras as his personal contribution revealed, on what transpired to be a grim night for the Irish rugby team.
The newly minted Irish citizen, formalised in a ceremony in Dublin in September after 10 years in the country, fought with typical tenacity and a wanton disregard for the lumps and bumps that ensued as he carried the fight on his broad shoulders to the land of his birth.
Few did more than Aki to try to put some oomph into Ireland’s misshapen performance, single-handedly at times trying to drag his team over the gainline.
New Zealand waited mob-handed in the midfield alleyways to jump him with multiple tacklers but Aki’s cussedness, his physical resilience, gave his team a periodic platform on the far side of what, for many of his team-mates, was an impenetrable black mass.
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The travesty was that Ireland could not avail of the latitude he created. The breakdown was a match-long issue as New Zealand players infiltrated rucks to telling effect, picking off crucial turnovers or forcing Ireland to concede penalties. Either way they cut off Ireland’s attacking circulation and its lifeblood – quick ball.
Even when Ireland did retain possession, it was slow and static, runners forced to generate momentum from a standing start or try their sleight of hand two postcodes behind the initial starting point. Too often the planned move dithered or withered in no man’s land.
Ireland’s normal performance standards dipped, lineout turnovers, no maul momentum, poor alignment and basic handling errors coupled with having only a third of possession (37 per cent) in the match divvy of that metric scuppered any hope of continuity.
The upshot, very little pressure, and instead having to rely on individuals to come up trumps. James Lowe had several brilliant cameos, so too Jamison Gibson-Park, but it wasn’t enough to rescue a performance that was suffocated by mistakes.
Some of the decision-making will be revisited in the review. Jack Crowley’s restarts were largely beautifully weighted for Hugo Keenan to chase. But why kick relentlessly to Jordie Barrett? Time and again he reminded Ireland of that folly.
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Even Aki couldn’t escape the general malaise. He tried to thread the needle with a pass to Caelan Doris when the better decision was options B, C or D in that moment and then on 11 minutes he dropped the ball from Mack Hansen’s pass with a gap and the New Zealand backfield beckoning. But these were relatively minor blemishes when weighed against his overall contribution.
It was he that set the tone from Ireland’s first scrum of the match when he won the duel with Jordie Barett on the gainline. Ireland got to the edge from the next ruck and while Aki’s pass to Doris brought the attacking cameo to an end it augured well. The Connacht centre’s tackle on Will Jordan on 29-minutes averted a potential try-scoring intervention.
Four minutes later he took out two tacklers with a robust carry deep in the heart of the New Zealand 22, but referee Nic Berry failed to spot an illegal hand in the ruck that prised the ball loose. A word for Aki’s midfield partner, Garry Ringrose, a Trojan in defence, covering so many gaps and also putting in some huge tackles, not least the one on the bête noire, Rieko Ioane.
The two combined a minute before the interval, Aki broke two tackles and surged into the backfield, linked with Ringrose, who copped a high shot from Jordie Barrett that resulted in a yellow card.
Aki fulfilled a pivotal role in Ireland’s only try, shortly after the interval. It was he who collared Sam Cane, won the initial collision, held him up long enough to convert it into a gang tackle with the arrival of Lowe and the pair drove the New Zealand flanker back into his in-goal area to win a scrum five metres from the All Blacks’ line.
The set piece provided the jumping off point for Josh van der Flier’s try. Ireland’s primary attacking gambit was a simple, ‘give it to Bundee and look for him to create a black hole’ but the home side rarely got into the parallel universe of the New Zealand backfield. Undaunted Aki continued to make inroads powering through and beyond Damian McKenzie on 50 minutes.
A problem was that Ireland never really managed to sustain that impetus for very long and for a variety of reasons, principally sloppy handling and a lack of accuracy in clearing out at the breakdown. There was a ‘Groundhog Day’ feel from an Irish perspective as they rarely deviated from Plan A and were increasingly reliant on the individual rather than team cohesion.
New Zealand were worthy winners, no quibbles, no what ifs or buts. Ireland were just off-colour. It happens, it’s sport. There have been precious few of those days and plenty of notable victories under head coach Andy Farrell. The challenge for the Irish group, coaches and players, is to review, react and reboot.
Irrespective of the composition of the matchday 23 for the game against Argentina next Friday night, it is the collective coherence that must return.
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