‘We will beat the All Blacks’

Paul O’Connell was many thousands of miles away when Ireland came within inches of beating New Zealand for the first time and seven days later when the All Blacks scored their biggest ever win over the Irish.

A knee injury that still hasn’t healed entirely meant the Munster captain missed the tour but he was probably more disappointed than the players involved at how those games developed.

“If anything, I wanted to be there more for the third Test,” he claimed. “You feel you’ve let them down by not being there. I’ve been in dressing rooms like that before and I’d say they were in a fairly tough place. Even though you don’t see it at the time, a lot of good things can come from bad days like that.