IT WAS MONDAY morning in Auckland. The All Blacks had already left town, jetting down to Dunedin for the second Test of their three-match series, full of joy, full of themselves, after a 23-point win.
Ireland meanwhile headed to a conference room on the second floor of their plush city centre hotel, partly to review, mainly to plan, figuring out how a first-night hammering could turn into a second-Test victory. “That was our thinking day,” explained Tadhg Furlong afterwards.
They had plenty to ponder, their heaviest defeat since Andy Farrell replaced Joe Schmidt as Ireland coach, the fluffed lines in attack, their problems at the set-piece.
Once, when he was an assistant to Schmidt, Farrell spoke to the players after they had suffered a loss to Australia. That too was the first of a three-game series and even if a distinction had to be made – that facing the Wallabies is an easier ask than the All Blacks – he still knew what he had to say.
“Now we’ll see what the good, old-fashioned Irish ticker’s about,” said Farrell in between the first and second weeks of the 2018 Australian tour. A year earlier he was similarly influential with the Lions. “I don’t think anyone is better than Andy at getting the tone right in a dressing room,” said Warren Gatland.
We saw that again on a Monday morning in Auckland. Farrell, his staff, and his players, had a lengthy meeting and had every opportunity to roll out a list of reasons why the first Test had gone against them: injuries, Covid cases, flight delays and concussions. Instead they ignored all those issues.
“We have a no-excuse mentality,” said Furlong.
It’s just as well. In the first Test of that tour, New Zealand stretched Ireland’s defence by regularly hitting the outside player in their three-man pod, issues which Ireland failed to cope with. By the final whistle, they’d conceded six tries, two more than they had coughed up in the entire Six Nations.
Previous Irish teams would have folded and followed one bad result up with another. This Irish side, however, had spent the previous 18 months working on their mental resilience and never was this clearer than when we logged onto a Zoom press conference on the Monday after the Eden Park loss.
There waiting to speak to us was the most heavily criticised player from the first Test defeat. Andrew Porter, who had conceded scrum penalties at Eden Park and was supposedly under pressure, sure didn’t sound worried either about himself or the All Blacks. “New Zealand? See, they’re not world beaters or anything like,” Porter said, pointing out that if Ireland had been more disciplined off the ball and calmer with it in Eden Park, they could have won.
“It really is just about us and how we can fix that,” said Porter.
Six days later they were showing us how, Porter scoring two tries as Ireland defeated the All Blacks on New Zealand soil for the first time.
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You’ve never seen a town change so quickly like you saw Dunedin’s transformation from the Thursday before the second Test to the day of the big match. After Covid restrictions, Ireland’s fans were the country’s first influx of tourists in a couple of years.
They stood out in Auckland but in provincial Dunedin it was like an invasion.
And they weren’t the only ones mobbing the streets. From right across the South Island, New Zealanders had landed in town. If Thursday night was tumbleweed haven, then Saturday night was party central.
That was when you knew something special could happen. Watching a match in Eden Park is like going to the library: worthy but dull. Attending a match – and the subsequent post-match — in Dunedin is like reappearing at your 21st birthday: mad, raucous and full of drink.
Ireland loved the place. By full time, they owned it. Porter scored twice. A few bottles of porter were toasted in his honour.
Previous Irish sides wouldn’t have responded that way because previous Irish sides would have lost confidence after the opening Test, when the All Blacks ran amok in the second quarter of that game, scoring four tries in 20 minutes en route to a 42-19 win. This time around, though, there was no self-pity.
“It was such a weird feeling after the game at Eden Park,” was Tadhg Beirne’s recollection of that week. “We lost, yes, and we were disappointed but everyone in that dressing room knew there were moments, little snippets, when we got things right. We felt coming out of that first Test, that on any other day we would have beaten them.
“We just had to get our own stuff right.”
Suddenly they knew something possible could happen. Flicking through history’s catalogue, it became clear how rare it was for teams to record series wins in New Zealand.
The Springboks managed just one, way back in 1937. England lost all six of their series in New Zealand. The Welsh have a similarly miserable return while the British and Irish Lions won one and drew one of their 12 series.
Then there is the French. Nine times they have toured New Zealand. Seven series losses, one draw and one victory – way back in 1994 – is their lot. The Aussies fare better with two successful series in New Zealand but even that comes with an asterisk. The victorious 1949 tourists won both Tests here against what was effectively a B team – as New Zealand’s first teamers were touring – and losing – to South Africa that same winter. They didn’t repeat that mistake in 1986 but Australia won again then, too.
And that’s it. In over century of touring rugby and over half a century of Test series on New Zealand soil, the All Blacks had lost just five series. On a July Saturday in Wellington, five became six.
It’s why those three weeks in New Zealand matter more than everything else that happened in 2022.
The Six Nations was a success – first Triple Crown since 2018, record away win over England, runners-up spot in the table – but the victory on tour was way bigger. Then, in November, came wins against the head against the Springboks and Wallabies. Both of those were impressive but could they have happened without the experience of the summer?
Possibly not, for New Zealand was where Ireland learned how to win ugly.
That third Test saw them produce the best rugby of the last five years in the first half, which they led 22-3.
“We said at half time they were going to come for us and they did,” said Beirne. “They upped it. They put us under serious pressure at times and got themselves back into the game.
“We talked about how we would have to get through that and come out the other side.”
That assertion was tested as the All Blacks reduced a 19-point gap to just three points when Will Jordan swept past Johnny Sexton to score in the corner with just under a quarter of the game to go.
There and then, huge questions were asked of Ireland’s resolve.
“The most pleasing thing for me was the composure we showed when they came back at us,” said Farrell in the press conference afterwards. “We never got ahead of ourselves when we were in front and we never panicked when they started to come back.”
Some idiot (okay, an admission: it was me) asked about the World Cup. “Ah, give us a break, would ya?” Farrell joked. And then the smile was replaced by a serious look. “We’re always looking ahead,” he said. “We’ve more to do.”
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We’ve been here before. In 2002, Ireland beat Australia, the then-world champions. In 2004, 05, 06 and 07, they beat 2003 World Cup winners, England. The Springboks beat England in the 2007 World Cup final and were then defeated by Ireland a couple of years later.
New Zealand in 2016 and 2018, now South Africa in 2022, are further examples of Ireland’s ability to beat the best in the world in between the biggest show of them all.
Can 2023 be different? Can Ireland go further? Certainly they have the ability to do so as very little separates the world’s top four sides. But Ireland’s trouble is they are in the same half of the draw as those leading teams, France, New Zealand and South Africa.
A big part of you doubts whether they have the squad depth to cope with an injury crisis in France next year. The hangover from previous World Cups is another headache that won’t easily disappear.
But you also believe they have a chance because you got to see first-hand how capable they were of rising to the occasion in hostile environments, Dunedin and Wellington, and how brilliant they can be when their engine clicks into gear.
More than that, being on tour also gifts you access to what happens away from the pitch.
You could see how happy the squad was as we all moved from city to city, noting how they benefitted from the freedom their coach gifted them.
No matter where they were based, Auckland, Dunedin, Wellington, you could see the players around town. The relaxed atmosphere clearly worked.
“A lot of touristy things went out the window once a couple of lads got Covid,” says Beirne. “We got out for coffees; we had our own bus, the players’ bus and we made the most of that. Some of the highlights of the tour were how much fun we had on that bus. It is the small things; you make the most of these tours.
“You just have a laugh; that is the whole part of this. You get to come out and enjoy each other’s company as much as you possibly can. You get to know each other a lot better. You had to make the most of it.”
You recall the final question Farrell was asked about the tour, whether he ever doubted if he had taken too much on, putting his team into a five-game tour, the two midweek Maori games being de-facto Tests.
“Every day, but that was the point,” he replied, saying how he wanted to see whether he had people who just go ‘tunnel vision’ and start worrying about themselves instead of being ‘team first’.
He put people under pressure and they responded. “To come away with what is the hardest thing to do in world rugby (win a series in New Zealand) is pretty special.”
And yet something tougher lies ahead. Winning a World Cup will be even tougher than winning in New Zealand because it is four big tests, rather than three, with three more tough games added in for good measure. Ireland will travel there believing they can win but even if they don’t, even if it is ‘just’ a semi-final that they get to, that won’t define this team. Winning in New Zealand has framed their legacy. Those lucky enough to have witnessed it won’t ever forget it.