Rain is wet, New Zealand beat Ireland... that’s just the way it is

Under-pressure Australia coach Robbie Deans said something fascinating in the wake of his side’s shock loss to Scotland in Newcastle a fortnight ago.

Asked to explain why the Wallabies were still capable of losing games to inferior opposition, Deans turned to amateur science. Australia, he said, didn’t have it “in their DNA” to close out the tightest games.

The All Blacks and Ireland started playing rugby together in 1905, about 48 years before doctors Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA, but it was easy to see a helix of truth in Deans’ words as those two sides trudged off the new AMI Stadium in Christchurch.