From Lomu to Lansdowne: Andrew Porter eager to make more memories against All Blacks

Andrew Porter. Picture: INPHO/Bryan Keane

There was a time when Irish teams dreaded Paris. That changed. There was a time when Irish teams couldn’t buy a win against New Zealand. That changed, too. There was a time when World Cups…

Okay, so two of three isn’t perfect, but Ireland’s relationship with the Kiwis has undoubtedly changed for the better.

What started with the women’s side’s historic first at the 2013 World Cup continued three years later when Nigel Carolan’s U21s took the scalp of the Baby Blacks in Sale when Jacob Stockdale, Hugo Keenan, and James Ryan were all on duty.

So was Andrew Porter. The Leinster prop would go on to play a cameo role two years later when Joe Schmidt’s senior side came through a pulsating November international with seven points to spare. All told, he’s got good memories when it comes to the Kiwis.

His first?

“My first match, I think it was 2005 maybe, I can’t remember the exact year, but I had a photo of myself and Jonah Lomu sitting in one of the hotels: myself and my cousin sitting with Jonah Lomu in one of the hotels that they were staying in.

“That was probably my first memory of the All Blacks. I remember my uncle brought me down to see them in the hotel and I just remember he was a mountain of a man. I was a big kid as well but looking at the photo I looked absolutely dwarfed.”

There’s a photo of the occasion somewhere in his house but, while he can’t remember if words were spoken or the exact year, the buzz of being in the presence of the game’s first global superstar has never left him.

“Yeah, I’d only really heard of him through that Playstation 1 game, Jonah Lomu,” he recalled this week. “I can’t remember what year it came out, but I remember playing that in my cousin’s house.

“That’s how I got to know him starting out. But, yeah, sure my Dad lived in New Zealand when he was younger so I remember him telling about Jonah Lomu, showing me videos when I was younger.”

Nostalgia isn’t something he normally indulges approaching a game of this import but it’s probably no harm that Ireland’s players can indulge a little in the fact that they have faced into this most Herculean of tasks in the past and triumphed.

That 2018 victory here in Dublin was more comprehensive than the 16-9 scoreline suggested. They say in golf that a good player can win one major but only a great can do it twice. There was something similar to that one, two years on from Chicago.

“When you are playing one of the best teams in the world and given their form you are always excited for these huge games. Thinking back to 2018 it seems like a long time ago now but, honestly, I can remember everything about that day.

“I didn’t get long on the pitch, but I had people coming up to me, even up to a couple of weeks ago, asking me, ‘what did it feel like, what was the atmosphere in the stadium like?’ They were people who weren’t at the game, family members.”

If that was a special day then the visit to Glasgow with Leinster for a meaningless Rainbow Cup game last spring, when he suffered a toe injury that cost him his place on the British and Irish Lions tour to South Africa, was the complete opposite.

“To be honest, I had some really, really bad days after that injury. At the time it is easy to get caught up in your emotions and your feelings in the ‘there and then’. It meant so much to me when I got my name read out.

“That being taken away was tough. It was gut wrenching stuff. I am nearly getting emotional thinking about it now. I put in a lot of work that time I was injured, especially over the summer. I got my weight down. I feel really good around the pitch because of that.

“I have come out stronger on the other side of the injury. At the time I had a lot of people around me, supporting me, people fighting my corner.

“My family and my girlfriend, people like that and obviously coaches and teammates reaching out to me, helping me along the way when I was injured. It puts things into perspective how people are around you when the chips are down.”