Donal Lenihan: Now we are seeing the true benefits of Ireland's NZ tour

The experience bagged from three successive tests against the All Blacks has proved transformative to this Irish set up.

PERFECT PREP: New Zealand perform the haka against Ireland last summer. Pic: ©INPHO/Photosport/Grant Down

News that Ireland will open their 2024 Six Nations campaign against France on a Friday night, not in the familiar surrounds of the Stade de France, undergoing a revamp for the Olympics - but, in new territory for this tournament, most likely at the Stade Velodrome in Marseille - set my mind wondering.

SIX NATIONS RUGBY CHAMPIONSHIP 2025

Your home for the latest news, views and analysis of this year's Six Nations Championship from our award winning sports team.

SIX NATIONS RUGBY CHAMPIONSHIP 2025

Your home for the latest news, views and analysis of this year's Six Nations Championship from our award winning sports team.

 

Wherever that opening Six Nations encounter ends up, it will mark Ireland’s first international post-the 2023 World Cup. What status will we carry into that opening game? Beaten semi-finalists or finalists? Reigning world champions? That feels a bit surreal.

As the game's top-ranked team at present, surely we can dare to dream. Traditional Irish pessimism would suggest we shouldn’t tempt fate but this Irish squad is made of stern stuff. Given the difficulty of the pool and likely quarter-final opponents in New Zealand or France, the Doubting Thomas’s amongst us are suggesting it will be another case of miserable endings in the last eight.

The next two weeks of Six Nations action sees this Irish squad entering perhaps the most crucial and exciting phase experienced by Irish rugby. Win in Edinburgh on Sunday and the prospect of securing a first-ever Grand Slam - only the fourth in Irish rugby history - at our spiritual home in Lansdowne Road would amount to the perfect springboard for the World Cup.

That is exactly what England, the only northern hemisphere winner of the Webb Ellis Cup in the nine tournaments played to date, managed in advance of their 2003 success when pulverising Ireland in Dublin to finally land a Grand Slam that had eluded Clive Woodward’s men with last day defeats over the previous three seasons.

England’s journey to rugby immortality in Sydney was further embellished by defeating both New Zealand and Australia on a rigorous tour down under, just three months before the RWC. Such are the demands on international players now that no Six Nations team will be touring this summer.

Instead, the build up to the World Cup will commence with a series of warm up tests in August. With due respects to Ireland’s scheduled opponents, Italy and England, with Samoa also likely to be added to the mix, those games will prove nowhere near as valuable or competitive as the journey undertaken by England in the summer of 2003.

To be fair to Andy Farrell, he took on an equivalent exercise when agreeing to a five-game tour of New Zealand last summer. The experience bagged from three successive tests against the All Blacks, coupled with two midweek games against their Maori equivalent has, in my opinion, proved transformative to this Irish set up.

Quite apart from the massive psychological boost gained from a rare series win over New Zealand on home soil, the experience gained by all 40 players brought on that tour has enabled those on the periphery of the starting team step out of the shadow of their more experienced teammates.

The real benefit has been seen throughout this Six Nations campaign when, in the absence of established figures in Tadhg Furlong, Tadhg Beirne, Jamison Gibson-Park, Johnny Sexton, Robbie Henshaw and Garry Ringrose due to injury, others have stepped into the breach and keep the show on the road.

Having negotiated all the setbacks that have fallen their way to date, Ireland now face two different, but equally challenging assignments, against a rejuvenated Scotland and, six days later, a desperate England in Dublin, to complete an incredibly important phase before attention turns exclusively to the World Cup.

Arriving in that space as Grand Slam or, at the very least, Six Nations champions would amount to a great achievement for Farrell and his coaches. Right now they are at the fine-tuning stage, conscious of not repeating the mistakes of 2019 when Joe Schmidt’s squad adopted a holding pattern rather than chasing further incremental gains.

In comparison to others, Ireland are perfectly positioned. England and Wales are playing catch up, having taken the nuclear option to change the head coach only two months ago. Six months out from a World Cup, Steve Borthwick and Warren Gatland are still on the starting blocks, attempting to identify their strongest combinations while working on the fundamentals of their game at the set piece, in attack and defence.

Potential quarter-final opponents New Zealand, who picked up the pieces of that series defeat to Ireland by winning the Rugby Championship and remained unbeaten on their European tour last November, are still grappling with issues surrounding their head coach Ian Foster.

The fly in the ointment here remains the future status of his Crusaders equivalent Scott Robinson, who the vast majority of the New Zealand rugby public believe should already be in Foster’s shoes.

On the eve of the World Cup and with the Super Rugby season down under having got underway two weeks ago, the NZRU are already ceding to pressure to clarify who is going to be in the most pressurised and sought-after job in the country after the World Cup.

Worried that Robinson might fly the coop and take a job overseas on completion of the Super Rugby season, the union confirmed last week that the new All Black head coach will be confirmed in advance of the World Cup with Schmidt, Foster’s current assistant, also in the picture.

Foster has become drained by all the pressure and speculation surrounding his job since losing that series to Ireland, so much so that he’s already confirmed he will not be reapplying for the job, regardless of what transpires in France next autumn.

Unsurprisingly, he has criticised the governing body for initiating the recruitment process in the middle of his World Cup preparations. Despite all this, Foster remains popular with his players. This unedifying process might well have a galvanising effect on all within the All Black bubble.

Bear in mind too that Australia pulled the trigger on their head coach Dave Rennie two months ago with the controversial appointment of deposed England boss Eddie Jones. Quite what impact his appointment is likely to have on the Wallabies remains to be seen but, given a comparatively easy draw and a decent squad to work with, Jones will be champing at the bit to prove his detractors wrong.

In the meantime, Ireland’s pool opponents South Africa have been beavering away under the radar. Rassie Erasmus and Jacques Nienaber have a huge squad to select from with so many front line contenders plying their trade overseas, complemented by another batch catching the eye with the four URC teams.

You can be certain Rassie was keeping an eye on his former charges in Munster and will be thrilled to see one of his key 2019 “bomb squad” behemoths in RG Snyman return to arms in Musgrave Park last Friday. If he can recapture his true form, Snyman could well cross paths with some of his Munster teammates when Ireland play the Springboks in Paris on September 23.

Two weeks later, back at the Stade de France, Ireland face an equally challenging contest when Farrell’s men lock horns once again with Gregor Townsend’s ever-evolving Scotland side. In seven attempts to date as head coach, Townsend has never presided over a win over Ireland.

Right now, Ireland seem to have their number. Which is why Sunday’s game carries more long term significance for the Scots than for us, especially with home advantage. If they fail to capitalise on the highly-charged arena, that Murrayfield has become, then the mental baggage they’ve carried into this fixture will become a whole lot heavier in advance of the pivotal pool meeting in Saint-Denis next October.

That’s why there’s far more at stake than just Six Nations match points in Edinburgh on Sunday.