Heaslip: All Blacks are not unbeatable

As Ireland prepare for what looks like mission impossible against world champions New Zealand at the Aviva Stadium on Sunday, Jamie Heaslip hopes the team can respond positively after the demoralising defeat to Australia last week and the humiliating outcome in the summer of 2012 when tomorrow’s opponents ran riot with a 60-0 win in Hamilton.

Heaslip believes there is a right to dream and pointed out it was a show of passion that helped Ireland go toe-to-toe with New Zealand in the second of three Tests last year. On that occasion the All Blacks were on the ropes at 19-19 before running out fortunate winners.

Heaslip promises there will be no repeat of the Australia debacle a week ago: “Off the back of last week, we’re not too concerned about what transpired because we will have learned from those silly tries we let in. They are all very, very fixable from our perspective. Looking at the game as a whole, we created a lot of chances. We didn’t execute them; we just didn’t attack correctly but we did take a small step. We learned a lot off the back of that game.