Simon Easterby reunites with Lions jersey at Jerry Collins' home clubhouse 

MEMORIES: Simon Easterby during Ireland rugby squad training at Jerry Collins Stadium in Porirua, New Zealand. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

Simon Easterby had often wondered what happened to the British & Irish Lions jersey he swapped with Jerry Collins following the second Test in Wellington 17 years ago.

He found out this week as Ireland trained at the home of Northern United Rugby Football Club, or Norths as it is more familiarly known.

Their grounds in Porirua, to the north of Wellington, now bears the name Jerry Collins Stadium in honour of one of their most famous sons who grew up on the housing estate over the road.

Collins, a Samoa-born, Porirua-raised 48-cap All Black back-rower, was tragically killed at the age of 34 alongside his wife Alanna Madill in a car accident in southern France seven years ago but his legacy lives on at the stadium and in the Norths clubhouse.

Easterby had trained with the Lions at the same ground on the 2005 tour ahead of that second Test, which is chiefly remembered for Dan Carter’s virtuoso performance at fly-half, and a 33-point haul at “The Cake Tin” that rocketed him into the All Blacks and world rugby pantheon.

For the Lions it was a chastening evening in the New Zealand capital on a calamitous tour and there is a picture of Irish duo Easterby, wearing Collins’ jersey, and Donncha O’Callaghan looking non-plussed as they surveyed the post-match scene as the home side celebrated their 48-18 series-clinching victory.

Returning to Norths 17 years on this week as Ireland’s defence coach, Easterby caught up with the Lions jersey he had traded for Collins’ All Blacks number six, framed and mounted among a collection of the former Hurricanes, Ospreys, and Narbonne flanker’s shirts from a glittering career.

The old-school clubhouse has some rich memories of the club’s finest talents, with an honours board featuring All Blacks and Blacks Ferns, under-age internationals and sevens representatives.

Hooker Hika Reid is on there, so too is the Paekakariki Express, Christian Cullen, who would leave the Hurricanes for Munster in 2003. There also is 2015 World Cup-winning scrum-half TJ Perenara, still upholding the Norths tradition having faced Ireland in midweek as captain of the Maori All Blacks.

Yet it is Jerry Collins Stadium that bears the most telling legacy to an All Blacks great.

What Collins would have made of the All Blacks side beaten in Dunedin last Saturday is anyone’s guess but for many of his fellow Kiwis who witnessed the 32-24 loss in the second Test the current state of affairs is alarming.

It has not reached existential levels quite yet, though a second defeat in eight days to the Irish this morning in Wellington may send some All Blacks fans over the edge and all bets will be off if a similar fate awaits New Zealand with their opening Rugby Championship fixtures taking them to South Africa and back-to-back Tests against the Springboks in Mbombela (formerly Nelspruit) and Johannesburg.

The first game against the world champions is three weeks away and already speculation has been swirling that a series defeat to Ireland could spell the end for head coach Ian Foster.

Last Saturday’s Dunedin defeat has shaken All Blacks followers. Former Munster and Ireland back-rower Alan Quinlan, over here working for Sky Sports, reported some Irish supporters he had spoken to post-match as having experienced verbal abuse from a small minority inside Forsyth Barr stadium as Ireland kept the series alive and on-pitch discipline from Foster’s men imploded.

Yet the majority of responses in defeat have been more reasoned and focused solely on New Zealand’s issues. The second-Test defeat was Foster’s third in four games following their back-to-back defeats to Ireland in Dublin and France in Paris last November and while it has sent the All Blacks down to fourth in the World Rugby rankings, matching their historic low point in the bafflingly constructed standings, it has sent the Kiwi mood plummeting even deeper.

For those who believed their 42-19 first Test win over the Irish at Eden Park on July 2 was a return to normality, as Ireland’s shortcomings once captain Johnny Sexton was removed for a Head Injury Assessment on 30 minutes were ruthlessly exposed by a side intent on returning to winning ways, the events since have injected a sobering dose of reality.

Foster’s win percentage of slightly less than 70 per cent since he was promoted from attack coach to succeed double World Cup winner Steve Hansen following the 2019 campaign has been aired with regularity and the country’s biggest selling newspaper, the Auckland-based Herald described their team’s performance as “passive and insipid” while taking aim at Foster and his coaching team.

Bemoaning the lack of a defined game plan, Herald rugby writer Gregor Paul wrote: "The All Blacks took one step forward last week, they took at least two if not three back in Dunedin and while their list of faults was long and comprehensive, the nuts and bolts of their demise could be summed up by saying they lacked physicality and imagination.

"The All Blacks were passive and insipid, saved from humiliation only by their miraculous scrambling defence which was brilliant. But the All Blacks can't survive in the rarefied air of Test rugby by spending most of the game on their own goal line and given their recidivist offending in the art of muscling up, it is now increasingly difficult to see how the coaching team can survive."

It is not just the New Zealand media. Conversations with local supporters and, naturally, Wellingtonian taxi drivers, are peppered with criticisms of the current set-up. They all inevitably reach the same conclusion, that Foster should go and New Zealand Rugby must act sooner rather than later for the All Blacks to have a decent build-up to next year’s World Cup under the new regime.

And beneath it all is an undercurrent of resignation that the once-seemingly unstoppable All Blacks have now hit the buffers, outfoxed when once they were the most calculated and cunning players and coaches on the planet.

Yet perhaps the most significant observation came from an Ireland squad member not even on the matchday 23. Ulster flanker Nick Timoney put in an outstanding, try-scoring shift at Sky Stadium last Tuesday as an Ireland VX captained by Keith Earls defeated the Maori All Blacks 32-24. It was the Maori’s first defeat by an Ireland team in four attempts as more history was made by this touring party to keep Irish momentum on track heading into Saturday morning’s third and final Test at the same ground.

As he shared his thoughts on the game, Timoney was asked if Irish players had now reached the stage where they were no longer fearful of facing New Zealand players, as they had been for so long before that first victory over the All Blacks at Soldier Field, Chicago, in 2016.

“Listen, with every good team you have an element of fear of what they could do to you,” Timoney said.

“But I think certainly the aura that there’s maybe something completely special or different around New Zealand is, like I don’t want to be sounding disrespectful, but when you beat a team a couple of times you sort of realise that they’re human, we’re human and certain parts of the game will dictate how the result goes. Dominate those parts of the game, you’ll win and I think that realisation has certainly hit Irish rugby in the last few years in this group.

“There’s lads who pretty much have been on par with and beating the All Blacks their entire time in international rugby now whereas back 10 or 15 years ago it was sort of this mystical thing that maybe couldn’t be done. So I think that’s gone.” 

Another defeat Saturday morning and that feeling could be contagious.