Aaron Cruden eyeing another memorable evening in Dublin

Three years on and Aaron Cruden is returning to the scene of the crime.

It was Ryan Crotty who broke a nation’s hearts by crossing the Irish try line at the Aviva Stadium in that dramatic last act but Cruden was the man who actually stole the victory for the tourists with a conversion from wide to the left of the posts.

And at the second attempt.

Joe Schmidt and a chorus line of his players would say later that the conversion almost didn’t matter. After 108 years of failure against the All Blacks, a second draw was of little interest to them anyway but there was still something cruel and clinical about the manner in which the final blow landed.

“What I remember is that I was probably more nervous with the first kick than the second,” Cruden explained at an AIG ‘Heroes’ initiative yesterday. “If I’m honest, when I hit the first kick and looked up I thought it was going over. Then all of a sudden it started moving out to the right of the post.

“I saw the referee giving me a second chance, saying the Irish had charged early, and then I was pretty confident in my ability and trusting in my routine. I was pretty sure the next one was going to go over and I suppose all the New Zealand fans were happy about it.

“But you could certainly see the heartbreak on the Irish faces that were there in the crowd.”

Cruden has played five times against Ireland and, until the meeting in Chicago two weeks, his memories of the green shirt have been uniformly happy. It started in 2010 when he made his All Black debut and Jonathan Sexton handed over his number ten ‘jumper’ as a memento to add to his own.

Cruden talks respectfully about the tough times he’s had against the Irish but hard stats reveal that to be mostly fluff. His first three meetings were all blowouts with the ABs scoring 168 points and 23 tries to Ireland’s 38 and five touch downs.

He would dearly love another crack at them today.

Track back just two years and the Chiefs’ whizz was the man bridging the gap at out-half during Dan Carter’s sabbatical from the game. It looked then like Steve Hansen had his next first five-eigth tagged for the post-World Cup period when Carter would walk away from the national side for good. That was until injury and Beauden Barrett interjected.

An ACL injury suffered last April ripped a chunk out of his season and one that unfortunately included the World Cup and, though Cruden was handed starting duties again this summer, he was shunted off-stage again in the second Test against Wales by a neck issue.

He’s been mostly ‘riding the pine’ since.

“It’s not too hard,” he insisted. “I’m a pretty motivated and a driven type of individual. For me I always want to be the starting number ten but I understand that there’s only 15 spots on a rugby team at one time.”

“The last few years have been a little bit frustrating with injury. So I’ve tried to remain upbeat and as positive as possible. Hopefully I’ll get a little bit of game time and have a good run because I know it’s going to be a great match.”

Debate continues to swirl back home as to whether Cruden or Barrett is the better ten.

The former is a better place-kicker, the latter supposedly offers more in open play and yet Cruden was effective off the bench in Chicago and he ended the game in Rome last week as man-of-the-match.

Still only 27, he is entering his prime and the All Blacks aren’t the only ones aware of it. Talk of interest from France has been rife as the last days of his current contract approach and he did little yesterday to douse rumours that he may soon be eyeing a longer stint in Europe.

“I’m not thinking about it too heavily at the moment. Maybe in a couple of weeks’ time, once my rugby for the year is all done, I’ll sit down with my wife and we’ll have a good chat about it.

“Look, I think it’s great being in the position that we are.

“Rugby gives you different opportunities to meet a lot of great people, travel the world, play against some of the best players on the earth. Yeah, it’s exciting. It’s an exciting opportunity.”