It’s only a decade ago since an Irish squad tiptoed away from Hamilton and New Zealand on the back of 60-0 beating which completed an All Blacks 3-0 series clean sweep. Ireland had still never beaten the almighty ones in black but on foot of the heartbreaking defeat of 2013 at the Aviva Stadium they have now beaten them five times in the last eight meetings.
Yet this topped the lot, completing a series comeback win to join an elite group of just four teams over the course of rugby history, in circa 62 attempts. Andy Farrell and Johnny Sexton appeared almost quite sanguine, although the head coach did seem to become a tiny bit emotional at one point.
Finding the words to describe the achievement by this Irish team was hard, even for Farrell.
“Pleased? I don’t think that’s the word. I mean, what’s the biggest thing that you can say about a group of people? I don’t think there is a word,” admitted Farrell.
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“Because that’s the hardest thing to do in rugby by a country mile,” he added, in placing this comeback series win into context. “We lost game one you know? We lost game one and our backs were against the wall. And apparently we was going to feel the full wrath of the All Blacks today and we said that was the challenge that we wanted.
“Our best 40 minutes of the campaign was in the first half,” ventured Farrell, not without reason. Indeed, it may well rank as the finest first-half performance by an Irish team away from home anywhere, anytime.
“And that says a lot about how they are as a team and where they’re going and the belief that they’ve got.
“This is the hardest thing you can do in rugby by a country mile,” he repeated, “especially when you take it down to the last game and we know from history that the All Blacks are going to come out firing.
“Just to be up so much by half-time. But the most pleasing thing for me was the composure we showed when they came back at us. Because they always do. And we never got ahead of ourselves when we was in front and we never panicked when they started to come back
“Well, we talk about this being the start of a World Cup year and it was never, ever mentioned about it being an end-of-season tour. You see the freshness of these lads. Have a think about it when you get a minute. Some of these lads haven’t played for eight weeks. Some of these lads are coming off the back of a loss in a quarter-final, semi-final, final.
“We had three days of camp before we left for these shores and it was back together like that. They’re a special group and they deserve everything they get.”
Following Joe Schmidt, even allowing for the 2019 anti-climax, was a tough ask and there were plenty of doubters when he assumed the mantle. Allowing for all his many achievements as a rugby league and union player, and then as a defence coach with England, the Lions and Ireland, and then as a head coach with Ireland, this had to be the zenith so far although, ever humble, he was having none of the personal glory.
“It’s difficult for me because it’s not mine, it’s theirs. They’ve grabbed hold of it hugely. I talked yesterday about the leadership group, how they’ve grown and developed and we’ve coached this team together. That’s the truth.
“Some of the stuff that they’ve done out there today, we’ve done it together so I suppose when you look at it like that I suppose it’s the most proud that I’ve been as part of a group, without a shadow of a doubt.”
Questions endeavouring to place this in the prism of next year’s World Cup prompted Farrell to quip: “Give us a break. Come on. Give us a break.”
But then he conceded: “Joking aside, you are right, because that’s the biggest thing about the tour, the learnings that we get from it as a group of 70 people, 40 players and 30 staff.
“To have done what we’ve done and to make it so hectic and so difficult, there’s so many lessons to be learned and that takes a lot of reflecting over the summer. And used in the right way it’s a powerful thing for us going forward.”
To his credit, Ian Foster was generous in his praise of the Irish team, insisting repeatedly that the night was all about the excellence of Farrell’s team, although he did say of Brodie Retallick that he had suffered a broken jaw as a result of the head-on-head collision with Andrew Porter.
