Matt Dawson on the elephant in the room for New Zealand

Ireland have the form, the confidence plus the weight of recent success behind them and are poised to do to New Zealand what the three-time World Cup winners have done to so many other teams in the past. That’s the view of Matt Dawson, a man who knows just what it is like to be part of a team tearing up the established norms of rugby lore.

“All of a sudden New Zealand are in a position that every other nation in the world has when they play the All Blacks; now they’re feeling what it is like to play against by far the best team in the world, based on results and position and you know if you don’t get it right, you are going to be punished and punished really badly,” said Dawson as he looked ahead to Saturday evening’s mammoth quarter-final in Paris.

“That part for me is going to be fascinating to see how New Zealand respond. They don’t tend to ever have that feeling when they play against South Africa or Australia because they play them so often. But having a whole week, or if not more, understanding they are by far the underdogs in the game is going to bring a very different dimension to New Zealand.”

The men in green have prevailed over the boys in black three times out of four in the past 23 months. In the same period you can add a Six Nations Grand Slam winning performance against England plus victories over South Africa, France, Australia, Wales… and just about everybody else.

That is more than enough to flip the aura from the habitual kings of the southern hemisphere to the strutting upstarts in the north.

New Zealand players in training - PA

“There is absolutely not a shred of any of those players’ bodies that fear playing against the All Blacks, which is how it used to be and what it still is for a lot of sides when they play against the All Blacks. Because they have not only played them a lot but they’ve been successful,” Dawson said.

The former scrum-half was part of the England side that crucially broke its own hoodoo by winning in New Zealand in 2003 ahead of their World Cup winning exploits, and he understands just what a difference recent results will have made to the two team’s quarter-final build-up.

“Deep down when you know it is a mountain to climb to beat the opposition or beat the All Blacks you spend a lot of your week trying to search for the way to do it and Ireland won’t be having to expend that sort of energy, that mental and physical energy on that, because they know how to do it, they just revisit old conversations and old places in their mind that they know have been very successful,” Dawson explained.

“That is a big leg up compared to the All Blacks who will be thinking, ‘how on earth are we going to break down Ireland’.

“They’ll tell us all that they are only focused on what they are doing but nobody has worked out Ireland. Nobody has worked out how to really put a spanner in the works for Ireland to (have to) work out what to do during a game. That takes a huge amount of time and energy that you really don’t have during a quarter-final week.”

In contrast, Ireland won’t have been “flogging” their players but will simply have been “resting up, (doing) little walkthroughs, small, short sharp gym sessions and lots of recovery”.

The fact the Irish have been to seven Rugby World Cup quarter-finals to date and never further, does not concern Dawson in the slightest.

“I would be flabbergasted if that is holding them back in any way,” the Englishman said, before adding simply, “Ireland have proven to be superb over the last year or so particularly being able to negate those reasons for doubt, which I think stands them above anybody else at the moment.”

Once New Zealand are out of the way, Dawson predicts an Ireland versus France final – a game he would “certainly like to be at”. You heard it here first.