Brilliant Ireland break new ground in taming All-Blacks

Inside Track with John McIntyre

NO wonder the country’s rugby fraternity want to canonise Joe Schmidt. Having led Ireland to only their third Grand Slam in 2014, the native New Zealander took his team to unprecedented heights on a momentous evening in Chicago last Saturday when the heroic men in green finally recorded a first ever test victory over the mighty All Blacks at the 29th attempt.

111 years of submission to the Kiwis came to an unexpected end at Soldier Field as Ireland produced an almost fanatical display of raw aggression, savage intensity and dexterous rugby in removing a huge monkey off their backs. It was a landmark breakthrough and there was absolutely no fluke about the 40-29 win either.

Similar to their agonising loss to the All Blacks at The Aviva three years ago, Ireland carried the fight to the World champions from the off. They dominated territory – forcing errors and indiscipline from their opponents – in storming to a 25-8 interval advantage thanks to tries from Jordi Murphy, CJ Stander and the brilliant Conor Murray, who exposed weak defence at ruck time for a terrific opportunist score.

We anticipated a huge New Zealand backlash at the start of the second half, but instead it was Ireland who piled on the torment with their fourth try from Simon Zebo to leave them ahead by a scarcely believable 22 points in front of a capacity attendance of over 62,000. Surely, even the All Blacks couldn’t rescue the match from here like they had done when trailing by 22-7 in 2013, but boy did they have a go.

Ratcheting up the aggression levels and prepared to run from anywhere, they admirably stormed back into the contest with a hat-trick of tries from TJ Perenara, Ben Smith and Scott Barrett to reduce the deficit to just four points with 16 minutes left. There was now a real sense of déja vu that the All Blacks were about to pull it out of the fire again, but this time Ireland were in no mood for compromise.

Their lines would not be breeched again and to put the seal on a milestone day, centre Robbie Henshaw crashed over from close range after great work from Jamie Heaslip in the dying moments. Overall, the Irish players were a revelation – even Rob Kearney who I thought was past it at this level – and the basic game plan of relentlessly hounding the All Blacks in possession served them so well. They fronted up from the start and obviously found inspiration from the desperately sad passing of Anthony Foley a couple of weeks.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.