The All Blacks perform their haka against Ireland. Photo / Photosport
The success of the Grand Slam tour by the All Blacks will depend, to a massive degree, on their performance against Ireland in the first game in Chicago.
Quite sensibly, Scott Robertson and his coaching team will be using the Grand Slam legend as a huge motivating factor. Losing to Ireland would not only be a body blow to team morale, but would also unleash the venom that comes to the surface whenever an All Blacks side doesn’t measure up to expectations.
Ireland feel like a team who are regathering, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be dangerous. Being the underdogs worked wonderfully for them in Chicago in 2016, when the All Blacks, in hindsight, took them far, far too lightly. The 2016 game came the year after New Zealand’s greatest performance in a World Cup, where the All Blacks had played rugby that combined daring with ruthless efficiency, a mix rarely seen at the highest levels.
But there was a little hint of New Zealand treating that game as a holiday in one of the world’s great cities ... a holiday that also happened to involve a footy game.
What won’t have changed in the Irish ranks this weekend is the burning desire Irish players have been bringing to matches with the All Blacks since 1905. When they won a three-test series here in 2022, their passion was amply demonstrated. Seeing a grizzled veteran like their flanker Peter O’Mahony in tears after the final whistle in the third test in Wellington, when Ireland won 32-22 to take the series, showed how much emotion they brought to the field.
That series loss triggered the lack of NZ Rugby’s confidence in their coach, Ian Foster, which would bloom into what we now know became a troubled relationship. To avoid a similar loss of belief, it could be that winning in Chicago this Sunday (NZT) becomes the most important task for Robertson and his team in 2025.
In many ways the recent niggle – face-to-face and online – between All Black Rieko Ioane and Ireland’s Johnny Sexton is odd, given that for decades the warmest relationship New Zealand rugby players have had is with the Irish.
Irish affection for the All Blacks reached its height in 1972 when, led by Ian Kirkpatrick, they played Ulster in Belfast. At the time, sectarian violence in Northern Ireland was at horrific levels. There were fears the All Blacks might withdraw from games north of the border.
They carried on, as recorded by the great Herald sportswriter, Terry McLean.
“When the All Blacks trained in snow at Ballymena, soldiers with loaded rifles were by the touch lines. At the Ravenhill ground in Belfast before, during, and after the match, soldiers, with one round up the spout and a finger on the trigger, faced inward to the All Blacks and outward to the crowd. It was a proud moment, I can tell you, for New Zealanders to be members of the crowd of 25,000 who on a cold grey November afternoon stood as Ian Kirkpatrick lead his men on the field. They saw every Irishman and woman clapping and clapping and clapping. All were there to express gracefully, endearingly, their pleasure at the Kiwi presence. At full time every man, woman, and child stood to make obeisance.”
The Irish Republican Army even gave the All Blacks a leave pass. Just before the test in Dublin, two months after the Ulster game, All Black Bob Burgess received a letter from the organisation.:“We would like to give you a word of explanation and some advice. We are at war with Britain, not with New Zealand. We will take steps to try to ensure your safety. But we suggest you should refrain from talking about politics.”
One of the great Irish-All Black friendships involved Colin Meads and another great lock, Willie John McBride, a craggy-faced, giant bank manager from Ballymena in Northern Ireland. They first faced each other in 1963 in Dublin in the opening test of the All Blacks’ tour of Britain.
“He [Meads] liked to test younger guys out and being of Irish temperament, I didn’t take too well to that,” McBride told Radio Sport the day after Meads passed away in 2017. “I gave him a bit of a lash and he ended up on his backside.
“One of our players grabbed me and said, ‘Do you realise who you’ve hit? Oh my God, you’ve hit Colin Meads. Now we’re all dead.’”
Meads would recall that once he was back on his feet he said: “This is war, McBride.” And so it was, for the next seven times they played each other in test matches, through to 1971. Away from the game they became the closest of friends, often staying in each other’s homes.
“In many ways, Colin was different off the field and always a joy to be with,” McBride would say. Those who saw McBride give a heartfelt, funny speech at a Halberg Awards dinner in Auckland in the late 1980s would say the same of him.
After the 1972 game with Ulster, won 19-6 by the All Blacks, a British Army captain came up to All Black skipper Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick says, “He was laughing like he’d just heard a hell of a joke. He said an Irishman in the crowd who had downed a few pints had yelled to him: ‘If the score gets over 40 points to the All Blacks, shoot the bloody ball!’”
Phil Gifford is a Contributing Sports Writer for NZME. He is one of the most-respected voices in New Zealand sports journalism.