Outclassed, outmuscled and out of the picture
The All Blacks racked up a 45-7 win with their ‘second string.’ Second string? When they settle on their first XV they’ll be tasty.
Saturday had more than a hint of the surreal about it from the start. The fire under the North Terrace meant the feng shui in Lansdowne Road was all wrong for a start; the bare ribs of terrace, studded with a dozen stewards’ reflective jackets, meant over 7,000 voices were out of the sound mix on a day Ireland needed every larynx.
As it was, the people who were present were reminded by the stadium announcer of the venue’s traditional welcome for visiting teams. He needn’t have worried. A few stray morons tried to shout down the Haka, but they were soon, er, shouted down by people calling for a respectful silence.
That silence was funereal long before half time.
Ireland tried getting the ball wide early on, an approach acknowledged by New Zealand coach Graham Henry after the game, but he was being polite. Ireland were game but outclassed in every part of the field.
Outmuscled, too. The visitors’ supple wing, Sitiveni Sivivatu, spoke after the game of his surprise at the ease with which New Zealand players broke tackles and enjoyed a marked physical superiority. He had no shortage of examples, either; when number eight Mose Tuiali’i straightened up after a scrum 24 minutes in he was confronted by two opponents, who tackled him; Tuiali’i simply rolled his shoulders and the Irish players fell off like drops of rain. Time and again New Zealand players showed what could be termed euphemistically a greater physicality. Sivivatu’s marked acceleration into traffic with the ball carried him forward again and again; inside him the bull-like Ma’a Nonu at centre took the ball up like a battering ram at every opportunity, though Nonu’s upright stance meant he had the look of a battering caber.
Eventually the caber tossed. Ten minutes into the second half Gordon D’Arcy - who tried hard all day - ran into Nonu and was picked up and upended. Odd, that: you wait 100 years for one dreadlocked New Zealand centre to upend a glamorous Irish centre with a dangerous tackle, then they all want to do it. Shane Horgan took umbrage and there was a brief disagreement, but the crowd were denied the warmth of a fight. Nonu was spoken to by referee Jonathan Kaplan sternly but not carded, which was probably the right call. After all, the poor soul was probably horrified at the potential damage his tackle could have caused - a book and DVD for the Christmas market, not to mention several thousand newspaper column inches.
It didn’t get any better as the day went on. It may have been of some comfort to Ireland to get a try deep in injury time - Wales didn’t manage one last week - but there were worrying signs everywhere. Ireland snaffled one or two line-outs, and Shane Horgan showed the kind of lionhearted approach that should have seen him Lionjerseyed a little more in the tests this summer. Apart from that - what? The signs of a team in decline? That question was put to New Zealand assistant coach Steve Hansen yesterday.
“Talking to some of their guys last night it’s pretty apparent that they’re trying to put things in place, that they’re trying to turn things around. They’ve got a squad of players who’ve been together for a long time, they surprised us a bit by moving the ball around early on, and they had us under pressure for a while.
“What you’d have to say is that the skill factors aren’t maybe as high in the northern hemisphere, as we saw on the Lions Tour in the summer. Wales threw the ball around quite a lot in the last Six Nations, and man for man they’re probably not the best team in that competition. But by playing at pace and chucking the ball around they were able to win it.”
Saturday may offer redemption against faltering Australia, but New Zealand? Out of the picture. Out of the frame.
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