McCaw: what happens on the field stays there, you move on

RICHIE McCAW has history with Ireland. Lots of it.

Nine years have elapsed since he won his first cap as an All Black at Lansdowne Road and he will be expected to earn his 94th on Saturday, a number that will edge him one ahead of Seán Fitzpatrick’s long-standing national record.

It will also be his tenth appearance against the Irish and, though he has finished in the black after every transaction, his most recent memories of the men in green was coloured by Jamie Heaslip’s costly rush of blood to the head in New Plymouth last June. McCaw has infuriated hundreds of opponents with his ability to skirt the borders of legality at the breakdown but few have reacted with such fury as the Irish number eight whose use of the knee earned him a red card.

“You just move on,” said McCaw of the incident. “I don’t think too much about it. I don’t know what others think but what happens out on the field stays there and you move on. I’m sure he probably regrets it. He got sent off and put pressure on his team. I’ve come up against all sorts of things in the last few years. You just move on.”

The incident clearly hasn’t diluted McCaw’s respect for the Leinster number eight, whom he mentioned yesterday in the same breath as South Africa’s Pierre Spies.

The classic image of Heaslip is with ball in hand and legs pumping but McCaw is the leader of a select pack that excels in much darker arts and one that includes Australia’s David Pocock and Springbok Heinrich Brussow.

For all the ongoing alterations in interpreting the breakdown, McCaw’s ability to frustrate in that theatre of operations has never been diluted. Unlike most players, he doesn’t care too much who is blowing the whistle.

“We’ve got Marius Jonker this week. I have had him, obviously, a few times over the years. I don’t think it will be too much different from last week, but you figure it out pretty quickly in a game and adapt to it.”

McCaw has always been a quick learner. His first taste of international fare back in 2001 ended with him claiming the man-of-the-match award but not before Ireland had leapt to a 21-7 lead early in the first-half.

His thoughts at the time? “I remember thinking ‘Jeez, this is a horrible way to start test rugby‘. It all went right pretty quick (after that).That was the first time that I got to play with a guy like Jonah (Lomu) and some of those other guys.

“If I remember rightly he scored a pretty easy try at some point that changed things around. I remember being pretty happy at the end that we came away with the win.”

For an All Black, being on the first side to suffer defeat at Ireland’s hands is as unthinkable now as it was back then and McCaw has no intention of being on the bridge when that particular ship goes down.

It is all but impossible to see Ireland torpedoing another Kiwi Grand Slam European tour given the respective form lines that the two bring to proceedings in Ballsbridge on Saturday.

Ireland shipped 66 points on this year’s summer tour but that should not mask the fact that the Six Nations side have in recent seasons pushed the All Blacks closer to the pin of their collar away from Dublin’s home comforts. It has been Ireland’s misfortune that New Zealand’s visits to these shores since 2005 have tended to coincide with the home side wallowing in a trough rather than surfing a peak.

The same applies right now given the evidence of the last two weekends and the feeling is inescapable that the Golden Generation of O’Driscoll, O’Connell et al have seen their best chance of scalping the All Blacks come and go.

“I don’t think so. Every day is a chance, I suppose. When we look at the Irish team there are a lot of guys who have been through those periods and they are still playing good rugby. If we allow them to function like that then they will show they can, like they did in the second-half in New Zealand in June. We started to give them a bit of an easy ride and they certainly made us pay for it. If we do that again we will be in trouble.”