All Blacks settle the score with brilliance and brute force

Ireland 9 New Zealand 21: Perhaps feeling battered, bruised and not a little hard done by is a sign Ireland have finally arrived on the world stage as a force to be reckoned with.

That will not ease the pain, in both mind and body, of Saturday night’s loss to New Zealand as the world champions gained often brutal revenge for their historic first defeat to the Irish in Chicago a fortnight earlier.

Yet the fact the All Blacks felt the need to tone down their irresistibly swashbuckling tendencies and dial up the physicality to sometimes cynical proportions at the Aviva Stadium in order to see off Joe Schmidt’s side and redress the balance between the two nations after Ireland’s heroics in Soldier Field may have been the ultimate compliment in some perverse way.