A final to be decided by defensive excellence

1. Australia will always back themselves to beat New Zealand.

The great Tom Kiernan once declared on national radio that, every three or four times Ireland played Australia, we would beat them nine times out of ten! Sitting with Moss Finn in RTÉ’s Cork studio that day, we suppressed a chuckle but we both knew exactly what he meant.

That was back in the early 80s before the great Grand Slam Wallabies side of 1984 came to Britain and Ireland, swept all before them. They changed the face of Australian rugby forever.