Four talking points as 'hold my beer' Ireland beaten by All Blacks

Let’s not beat about the bush, Friday at Aviva Stadium ended up as flat as the Kamala Harris election night party earlier in the week in the United States. The consensus was that Ireland would giddily deliver a performance reflective of their World Rugby number one ranking and stick it to Scott Robertson’s 'unconvincing' All Blacks.

Instead, the Irish were like a mouldy pint of Guinness where after the first couple of gulps you know damn well you are in trouble, and as hard as you fight on through it, you ultimately just can’t bring yourself to drain the glass and finish it.

That was Ireland’s performance in a whole 568 millilitres – an awkward taster, a battle through to beyond halfway and then a not-so-sweet surrender. From 3-9 down to leading 13-9 and then a sobering 13-23 denouement where the margin of defeat was kind. It could have been way worse. Here are the RugbyPass talking points:

Bench bounced

England were pilloried for the lack of impact their bench made against New Zealand, blowing their 22-14, 60th minute advantage. If the English – who still had two kicks to win it in the closing stages – were bad finishers, Ireland went ‘hold my beer’ as their 13-12 hour-mark lead became a 10-point defeat that had quite a number of their fans heading for the exits with a couple of minutes left to play.

“Write that down, they were s**t” was one of the sharp observations tossed the way of the media box as they made good their early escape down the steps. If you pardoned the swearing, they had a point. Ireland sucked when it most mattered and were a deflating second best.

It was at the interval when RugbyPass jotted down some energy-sapping stats suggesting this was very much an evening for the Irish bench to contribute big.

By half-time, following a first half where New Zealand had been more dominant, the penalty count was 7-3 against, linebreaks 0-4, defenders beaten 3-14, and offloads 1-4. There were also a multitude of tackles made, James Ryan putting in a dozen with Josh van der Flier just one behind.

In other words, it had been quite the exhaustive defensive shift and fresh legs and lungs would definitely be needed. Ireland were still a point up when Andy Farrell first rolled his dice, sending on four replacements in one fell swoop on 58 minutes, but none of this quartet enjoyed a cameo to remember for the right reasons.

The unfortunate Tom O’Toole was gone within 90 seconds, clattered by Wallace Sititi and left worryingly dazed, and the return of starter Finlay Bealham in the sub’s place was immediately followed by New Zealand pilfering from him the scrum penalty for the lead-taking Damian McKenzie kick.

Iain Henderson then coughed up a knock on and a lazy breakdown penalty in quick succession at the cost of three more points. Next, Ciaran Frawley knocked on either side of his ballooned clearance kick that was the invite for New Zealand to eventually go and strike for Will Jordan’s try quite a few phases later.

To cap it all for the not so fab four, replacement hooker Rob Herring was penalised at the 73rd-minute ruck in the opposition's 22, that concession essentially ending Irish hopes of hitting back from a two-score deficit and leaving impatient home fans rising to their feet and leaving.

Ireland’s other four swaps came with the score at 13-23, Peter O’Mahony and Jamie Osbourne given 10 minutes each and Conor Murray managing six minutes along with Cian Healy. This quartet felt like change for change's sake rather than a genuine plan B capable of handling the emergency.

What a dramatic change it was from 17 weeks earlier when the on-message Irish subs were a sublime part of the comeback 25-24 win in South Africa.

Warm-weather gimmick

If there is a moral to clutch from this 2024 Autumn Nations Series it’s that this gimmick of warm-weather training can’t beat good old-fashioned mucking around in the conditions that you actually have to play our match in.

England’s preparations in Spain did them no favours when it came to producing a result last weekend against the All Blacks, as they lost out 22-24, and it was ditto for Ireland, who had limbered up for their November… in Portugal!

Coach Farrell is generally a no-excuse type of character and he was genuinely gracious in defeat, congratulating New Zealand for their win without a prompt, but before he signed off on his ‘live’ post-mortem, there was reference made to “a lot of errors because of the weather a little bit that came down..."

How ironic. You jet off overseas to sunnier climes prepare for the biggest match of your autumn calendar and then learn heavily to your cost that your team wasn’t fully ready to combat the Irish weather match conditions that New Zealand had been knocking about in since their arrival last Sunday from London. That sounds like a very painful, self-inflicted wound.

Paying a heavy penalty

At the Rugby World Cup, the quarter-final penalty count when these two countries collided was 10-all but it was very different in Dublin with the Irish penalised 13 times compared to just five New Zealand infringements, six to two in the result-settling second half.

Farrell was pragmatic, admitting that even if a few of the clarifications they will seek to prove they were hard done by, they should have been more precise in their play in the first place.

The consequence of this inaccuracy was to leave McKenzie expertly landing six of his seven penalty kicks at goal, none more important than the 62nd-minute score. “The turning point was the crucial penalty from the scrum and they kicked the goal,” rued the Irish boss.

For sure, that critical set-piece where Bealham was deemed to have led an illegal drive forward was the beginning of the end for Ireland. Their lineout didn’t sing either and the takeaway was that there are four certainties in life – birth, death, taxes and never writing off New Zealand.

The night's 'proper' scoreline

In talking up this monster fixture pre-game, one of the oddities we published was how 13 months ago when the teams last clashed the Irish ‘won’ 14-3 in the 20-minute period in which the All Blacks were down two players to yellow cards in Paris but they were decisively ‘beaten’ 10-25 in the hour when the contest was 15 versus 15.

Friday night was another occasion when the Irish simply couldn’t handle New Zealand when the numbers in personnel were the same. Ireland ‘won’ 10-3 the 10 minutes that Jordie Barrett spent in the sin bin following his foul play ‘hello’ to Garry Ringrose, his soon-to-be teammate at Leinster.

However, the 15 versus 15 part of the match convincingly went the way of the All Blacks on a 20-3 scoreline. That’s quite the jarring margin and a proper reflection of the gap that existed between the teams in terms of performance.