Joe Schmidt called it poking the bear after his Ireland team came home victorious from Chicago last November and supporters will remember just how ferocious and grizzly it turned out to be when the All Blacks went gunning for revenge a fortnight later in Dublin.

There is a song by the Kinks called Death of a Clown, which seems rather apt in the wake of a New Zealand newspaper’s caricature of the head coach of the British & Irish Lions with white paint and a red nose.