Donal Lenihan: Immortality awaits...but All Blacks rarely make the same mistake twice
Eyeing their moment: Ireland's Finlay Bealham, Johnny Sexton and Peter O'Mahony during the New Zealand Haka. Pic: INPHO/Billy Stickland
To put the historical significance of tomorrow’s third test into context, only three sides have ever won a series in New Zealand against the All Blacks since records began with the visit of the British and Irish Lions in 1904.
South Africa were the first to do so with a 2-1 series win in 1937. In 12 tours, the Lions only achieved outright victory once, in the 1971 campaign with two wins, a draw and a loss sufficient to clinch the spoils. France were the last touring side to achieve this feat, winning 2-0 in 1994.
Speaking about history, if Eden Park appears to have wrapped a comfort blanket around the All Blacks given their unblemished record since losing to France in that series, Wellington has proven a bit of a bogey venue with just one win in the last five tests staged at the Cake Tin, a sequence that includes two draws and two defeats.
Wellington is known as the Windy City for a reason. The gale force gusts that envelop the nation's capital from the Tasman Sea, off the South Pacific Ocean, are notorious. At least the touring party got a feel for that in Maori All Blacks match at Sky Stadium on Tuesday night. The conditions really were horrendous at times. Thankfully, the forecast for Saturday is set to be a bit more forgiving, which will come as a relief to both sides.
The pressure on the New Zealand players and management coming into this decider has been ratcheting up after what has been labeled the “Debacle in Dunedin”.
The reaction to the defeat has been unrelenting, ranging from “worst ever All Blacks test performance" to a "mediocre effort, passive, error prone”. The list goes on.
The response from the home management has been swift with four significant changes resulting in their strongest combinations of the series. After all the debate surrounding Johnny Sexton’s inclusion for the second test after failing HIA1 in Auckland, the hosts wasted no time in rushing lineout guru Sam Whitelock back to the fold this weekend after his concussion in that game.
The return of Nepo Laulala at tighthead prop and the switch of Scott Barrett to No 6 makes them significantly stronger up front. Behind the scrum, the predictable recall of Crusaders' pair David Havili and Will Jordan, both covid victims for the first test, also makes them significantly more potent in attack.
What odds the All Blacks leading proceedings with the first staging of their specially designed Haka, the Kapo O’pango, which they hold in reserve for special occasions.
That could be the first indication of how desperate they are to win this one.
The great Welsh winger Gerald Davies recalled years after the Lions secured their historic win here that “a major factor in their victory was self belief”. Davies explained, "somewhere along the line it becomes a mental thing. We grew in confidence; we came to believe it was possible to beat the All Blacks."
That was 51 years ago but the same sentiments hold true today. With four wins in the last seven games between the sides, that first success in Chicago in 2016 helped break down the inhibitions Ireland often carried into games against New Zealand. Beating them out here on their own patch should prove even more significant down the road, hopefully come World Cup time. What Ireland haven't achieved over that impressive run of success since 2016 is to stitch back to back wins together. Every time we beat them, they bounced back the next time out and taught us a bit of a lesson.
That is another mental barrier Ireland need to address tomorrow. It would be so easy, at the end of a long season, with historic victories over the Maori and full All Black side achieved in a four day period, to switch off and be happy with our lot.
Hopefully that is where the famed IRFU high performance guru Garry Keegan will earn his corn this week. Getting the players in the right mental state again, will prove every bit as important as rising to the physical challenge New Zealand are guaranteed to bring from the outset tomorrow.
While New Zealand responded to that defeat in Chicago in 2016 by unveiling a brutal physicality, at times beyond acceptable levels in Dublin two weeks later, they need to be careful in overstepping the mark this time out. Their discipline in Dunedin was appalling. They can’t afford to go down that road again.
If the judges showed their scorecards marking the setpiece and breakdown from the first two tests, it would be a dead heat. New Zealand led the way on both counts in Auckland, dominating Ireland at the scrum and out of touch while also edging the physical exchanges and turnover counts at the breakdown.
Ireland addressed those issues in Dunedin with a superior scrum and a more productive lineout. The outstanding break away trio of Peter O'Mahony, Caelan Doris and Josh van der Flier, supplemented brilliantly by the superb work of Tadhg Beirne and Dan Sheehan, ruled the roost in broken play. However, a realistic assessment of that achievement has to take into account the absence of New Zealand’s most experienced line out leader in Whitelock, the fact that the home setpiece had to cope with having only seven forwards for all but 17 minutes of the game, coupled with the loss, through a poor officiating error, of their most dynamic forward in Ardie Savea.
Even for New Zealand, that combination of events proved too much to overcome, especially in the face of an Irish pack who were magnificent on the night. The changes made up front are clearly designed to address those issues.
The recall of Laulala to the front row is solely with the scrum in mind. He is rated as a far better scrummager than Ofa Tu’ungafasi so Andrew Porter is in for a hectic evening. Whitelock’s presence makes them far more potent out of touch and also enables them shift Scott Barrett to the tail of the lineout where he will seek to frustrate Ireland’s favoured source of attacking ball.
With Savea likely to go the full 80 minutes this time out and Sam Cane set to prove he’s more than “a poor man’s Richie McCaw”, the competition at the breakdown will be ferocious. If Ireland made the case to the officials, with good cause, after the first test about how New Zealand were taking out players beyond the breakdown, the All Blacks have been making it clear to Saturday’s referee, Wayne’s Barnes, that the Irish players continue to roll out their side of the ruck, after the tackle, in order to slow the recycle. Barnes will certainly police that.
How many times have we heard about teams learning more in defeat than in victory. Ireland certainly put the experience of the opening test loss at Eden Park to good use at both the setpiece, where they were so much more accurate, and the breakdown in the second test.
The same lessons should be learned in victory. The best teams operate in a state of clam assurance when the pressure is at its greatest. They also recognise when opportunities arise to put the opposition away. At the height of their powers, New Zealand were the most ruthless team in the game, regularly cutting teams apart when they sensed vulnerability.
Ireland must take that lesson on board, even when basking in the glory of last week's historic result. The bottom line is, with New Zealand reduced to five backs in the closing minutes of the first half, Ireland lacked the composure to take advantage, despite being camped in the opposition twenty two.
Failing to execute in such a prime position let New Zealand off the hook. When Beauden Barrett scored under the Irish posts in added time to turn what should have been a 17-0 lead for Ireland at the break into a narrow 10-7 lead, the All Blacks were purring. Ireland won’t get away with such wastefulness against an entirely different animal again.
New Zealand too are drawing from past experiences, not least the brutal reaction to the 2016 win in Dublin referenced above. Sam Cane, who was very lucky to avoid a red card that day for a high tackle on Robbie Henshaw, spoke about it in the past and admitted “the problem about being so brutal that day was that we failed to trust our micro-skills and play the heads up rugby that had served us so well that year. We were one dimensional - all bludgeon and no rapier”.
This is a mistake they are very conscious of not repeating if they want their revamped attack to flourish.
Cane also highlighted issues raised in the painful review conducted in the wake of last weekend’s defeat. “Rugby can be a simple game. We had 27 unforced errors. When you think how many minutes we had the ball, that’s just ridiculous and our discipline left us down massively”.
A simple but accurate assessment. They tend not to make the same mistakes twice.
The prize for the Irish players tomorrow is a shot at rugby immortality. It would mark the most significant achievement by an Irish rugby side, dating back to the foundation of the IRFU in 1874. It really is that big.
