Maybe
Rieko Ioane should spark a personal feud with everyone he plays against, because being a hated man in Ireland brought the best out of him.
The 23-13 victory in Dublin was a coming-of-age story for some All Blacks, such as Asafo Aumua and Damian McKenzie, but for Ioane it was perhaps the moment he managed to convince everyone that he has reinvented himself from world-class wing to world-class centre.
Ioane had, arguably, his best game as a test centre in Dublin, bringing energy and vibrancy but, more importantly, there was genuine guile about the way he played and subdued a vaunted Irish midfield.
His defensive shift was enormous and while it stood out for its accuracy, intensity and intuition, it was by no means a surprise that he splatted Irish runners the way he did.
Ioane, for all that he may have struggled to impose himself with ball in hand at times this year, has been a supremely good defender.
He’s learned how to read an attack, when to hold his ground and when to launch at a ball carrier – it’s just that against Ireland, he took all that to a new level.
Ireland had a second-half stinker on attack, some of it being down to their own lack of clarity, but there’s also no doubt that Ioane had unsettled them and frustrated them by being everywhere they didn’t want him to be.
There were tell-tale signs of Irish runners lifting their head as the ball came their way to assess where Ioane was and the number of passes that went to no one were further evidence of a team that had lost confidence in its own running lines as they knew the All Blacks had a sixth sense of where it was all going.
But it was with one exquisite catch-pass that Ioane demonstrated that he is not the player he was at the start of the year.
The All Blacks were in the midst of a free-flowing, left-to-right attack when Ioane received the ball and an Irish defender at the same time.
He managed to not only check his run to make a difficult catch but also throw a perfect pass to the unmarked Mark Tele’a in the same process.
It freed the wing to make 20 metres, and it’s being able to capitalise on these micro moments that makes all the difference in test rugby.
Earlier this year, Ioane was struggling not with the accuracy of his pass but with the more basic concept of the need to make one.
He was too regularly tucking the ball under his arm and ignoring space and opportunity outside him.
He paid a price for that when he was dropped for the opening Rugby Championship test against Argentina.
At the time, head coach Scott Robertson wasn’t willing to say too much about the reasons why he demoted Ioane to the bench, but he didn’t have to.
It was obvious without being stated that Ioane wasn’t facilitating the attack with his distribution.
It reached the point where Ioane would train with a no-run embargo applied – he was under orders to pass every time the ball came into his hands.
The training plan was designed to reprogramme him to some extent and condition him into assessing his options when he took possession rather than default to running into space or contact.
It kind of worked as Ioane started to pass more as the Rugby Championship played out, but the problem then became his accuracy.
In Sydney, against the Wallabies, there were a few wild hurls to no one and the occasional lack of precision that left catchers reaching and stuttering.
By the end of the Rugby Championship, the old debate about whether he should revert to the wing was rekindled, partly because he looked so much more effective when he returned there in the final quarter of most tests and partly because he was still underdelivering at centre.
But following the game in Dublin, there is a sense now that Project Ioane has been completed. That he’s marrying all the component parts – that he is now better at assessing his options, and better at executing them and that he is very much the all-action, abrasive player the All Blacks need at No 13.
He comes with physicality, but now also a touch of creativity and subtlety and clearly it suits him to put himself in the limelight, stick a massive target on his back and then thrive under the self-inflicted pressure.
The whole of Ireland was willing him to fail last Friday – to be smashed around and make a goose of himself after he made himself public enemy number one for his comments to Johnny Sexton last year.
Yet there he was, leading the haka to send a message that was ready to face the ire of the Irish head-on – then he played like he was the Mayor of Dublin.
It was classic pantomime villain stuff – winding everyone up with his antics then winding them up again with his brilliance.
His actions in goading the Irish were maybe not to everyone’s liking, but there has to be some respect for the way he delivered a performance that justified the little tinge of arrogance that has laced his interactions with the men in green these past 13 months.
All Blacks v France, Sunday 9.10am
Live commentary on Newstalk ZB, Gold Sport and iHeartRadio. Live match blog at nzherald.co.nz
