Ireland may well be sick of it, but they are proving to be quite the catalyst for bringing the best out of the All Blacks and redirecting New Zealand coaching regimes.
It was Ireland who subjected Ian Foster’s All Blacks to a humiliating series loss in 2022 and forced a massive overhaul of the coaching staff, game plan and playing personnel, which ended with New Zealand exacting revenge in the World Cup quarter-final 18 months later.
And it was Ireland, so desperate to smack New Zealand for killing their World Cup dream, who brought the best performance of 2024 out of the All Blacks on Friday night and set new coach Scott Robertson’s regime on an entirely new trajectory.
New Zealanders weren’t sure about Robertson’s All Blacks before playing Ireland.
The new broom came in earlier this year and didn’t do a huge amount of sweeping, picking mostly the same players as his predecessor, but unlike Foster, Robertson didn’t have such a clear idea about how he wanted them to play.
And unlike Foster, Robertson didn’t have the experienced Joe Schmidt within his camp – a wise, older head with an incredible eye for detail and knowledge about how to refine a game plan and adjust the technical craft to deliver it.
The upshot was that the All Blacks of 2024 looked like a pale, confused, less impressive version of the All Blacks of 2023 throughout July and then through the Rugby Championship.
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There were occasional flashes of magic, but usually they were sparked by individuals exploiting opportunities the opposition had created through the mistakes they made.
By the end of September, the All Blacks had won six tests and lost three, one of those being a home defeat to Argentina and there were all sorts of questions building about Robertson.
Was he struggling to make the leap from Super Rugby to the international rugby? Did he really know what style of rugby he wanted his team to play?
What was particularly hard to fathom was that after losing back-to-back Tests in South Africa – games in which the All Blacks had led coming into the final quarter – Robertson began telling the media that he now realised the importance of having experienced players on the field in those big games.
That seemed a somewhat naive realisation to be making midway through the season when everyone assumed he would have come into the job with that sort of understanding long-established.
When the All Blacks came back from South Africa and bungled their way to a sketchy win against Australia in Sydney, there was no one ready to believe a corner had been turned when they produced a solid, more convincing effort the following week against the Wallabies in Wellington.
But that’s all changed now because of the way the All Blacks fronted up in Dublin. It was clearly the game they had been waiting for – a test that the coaching group had been working towards.
All week in Dublin leading into the game, the All Blacks were overtly nervous and unsettled. They kept changing the media schedule because they wanted to train for longer on certain days.
On the Monday, they ran an hour over time until assistant coach Jason Holland sneaked out of training to speak with the media for five minutes.
He eased himself out from behind a locked gate, carefully ensuring no one could get a glimpse of what was going on.
When Robertson then unveiled his team on the Wednesday he seemed fidgety. He was desperate not to get involved in any discussions about the intensity of the rivalry – determined that the bad blood that had flowed at the end of the World Cup quarter-final was not going to be part of his narrative.
There was nothing about the season or the specific build-up that imbued confidence about what may happen at the Aviva, but that’s the magic of playing Ireland these days for the All Blacks – it brings the best out of them.
A lineout that wobbled the week before against England was significantly better in Dublin.
Asafo Aumua, the young hooker who started in place of the injured Codie Taylor, had the game of his life.
His throwing, wobbly and suspect the week before, only had one misfire, but his ball carrying and tackling rattled Ireland for an astonishing 79 minutes.
Rieko Ioane, yes him, had his best game of the year, with a huge defensive shift and a micro moment of exquisite skill when he managed to flip a pass to Mark Tele’a when he received man and ball shortly before Will Jordan’s killer try.
But what was different about this All Blacks performance was the fluidity and certainty of it.
There was, for the first time this year, maturity in the decision-making, and the game management was astute.
That the All Blacks managed to outthink Ireland was the big surprise, because this has been the real failing of New Zealand rugby for the last four or five years now – they lack the strategic nous to manage all their component parts and harness their full potential.
Yet when they were under intense pressure in those first five minutes of the second half when Jordie Barrett was in the sinbin and Ireland scored their try and were starting to crank up, there was nothing but calm and common-sense rugby in response.
Many in Ireland may feel these are endemic All Blacks traits, but the truth is they haven’t been for too long.
Maybe it was the impact of Covid or losing the South Africans from Super Rugby, but some time after the 2019 World Cup, the All Blacks lost the art of playing Test rugby.
They forgot how to handle the pressure moments. They forgot how to wrestle back momentum, and they stopped being able to instinctively read how each situation needed them to respond.
Last Friday, they rediscovered that lost art, and it was their game management that got them home.
They kicked well and at the right times, instinctively knowing when it was best for them to play with the ball and when to play without it.
When they sensed they had Ireland rattled and reeling, they picked when to pull the trigger to keep the ball alive and worked Jordan into the corner.
Central to this intelligent rugby production was Damian McKenzie, the little number 10 having his most disciplined and smart 80 minutes in the role.
Like the All Blacks, there were doubts about whether McKenzie had the aptitude and ability to be a superstar on the world stage, but he buried those with the way he enabled the players around him and by the way he mixed up his pass, kick, run contribution.
“I think we are building really nicely as a team and it is not really about proving a point or making a statement, it was just about playing our best rugby and there were patches there where we saw that,” McKenzie said afterwards.
“In Test matches you have got to win wee moments, and we were able to do that. There have been times throughout the year when my game management has been a massive work-on.
“Tonight it was about trying to win the small moments and to make the job as easy as possible for our forwards. And you do that by winning the kicking battle and that was a big focus this week.”
No one can say how good this All Blacks team is likely to become, but thanks to Ireland, the optimism about their future has greatly increased.
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