Ian Foster reckons Bundee Aki now ‘plays the Irish way’

So much for Steve Hansen’s “Irish trick” then.

It was the New Zealand’s coach who speculated that Conor Murray’s omission from the original Ireland squad was nothing but a ruse from Joe Schmidt and he was still clinging on to the theory that the scrum-half could play as recently as Sunday evening.

Monday’s missive from the IRFU was the definitive counter to that so, with Hansen busy elsewhere, it fell to assistant coach Ian Foster to face the tongue-in-cheek query as to whether the All Blacks boss still expected to see Murray ditch his tracksuit.

“You’ll have to ask Steve,” came the clipped response.

Do you think he will play?

“Oh, I’m not sure.” So, how big a loss will he be then?

“Look, he is a fine player, to be fair, but whatever happens we are here to play Ireland and not just individuals within Ireland. If it’s not Conor Murray then I’m sure they’ve got another four or five half-backs there that are willing to put their body on the line and have a great game for them.”

He may have been chippy then but it was a mostly chipper Foster who fronted up. The All Black PR operation is a machine and it gets oiled almost every day on tour. Lubricating the agenda to smooth their path — as with the Murray flyer — is second nature.

So Foster hardly blinked when asked if this week’s assignment was a step up from their last engagement, in Twickenham — “I’m certainly not going to give you a headline saying one is bigger than the other” — but he was less assured when discussing Bundee Aki.

The Connacht centre will face his native country for the first time this Saturday and Foster skated into some potentially dodgy territory when asked if some of his players would benefit from some supposed inside knowledge of the centre.

“I don’t think so. He had a few years with the Chiefs and played really, really well. He has been over here a while now and you have moulded him into an Irishman.

“He looks like an Irishman now, doesn’t he? He plays the Irish way. There will be a couple of our guys who have probably played with him and know him personally but we are kind of getting used to that.”

His delivery was much better when quizzed on Jonathan Sexton’s observation on Monday that Ireland have had a tendency to get on the bad side of Saturday’s referee Wayne Barnes.

“I’m not sure why he is saying that. Barnesey is a great ref. Johnny seems to give him a bit of advice on the park too so I’m sure he’ll carry on doing that.”