Donal Lenihan: Ireland's failure to cope with All Blacks pressure will irk Andy Farrell most

If anything, it made the dramatic 25-24 win in Durban the following week even more stunning. Returning home with a shared series against the best team in the game left everyone on a high heading for a well-earned summer break.

With Andy Farrell riding into the sunset on his Lions sabbatical at the end of the month, this four-game sequence was targeted to see him off on a high with his squad in rude health. 

The big caveat was that Ireland were starting a demanding sequence of Tests against the two strongest sides in New Zealand and, on the back of their exploits in the recent Rugby Championship when recording wins over South Africa, Australia and New Zealand for the first time in one campaign, Argentina.

The fact that New Zealand had already played twice on tour, against Japan and England, meant they were always going to be more Test-hardened by the time they arrived in Dublin. We’ve been down this road before however, and under Farrell, this Irish side has a strong track record of hitting the ground running at this time of the year. 

In terms of planning and preparation, it’s an area the big man has always mastered.

Unfortunately, that proved not to be the case last Friday when Scott Robertson got the better of his famed opponent in the coaching box to deliver perhaps New Zealand’s best performance since he stepped on board.

All of a sudden there’s big pressure on Ireland to win the next three games, starting with Los Pumas on Friday night. The recent history between the All Blacks and Ireland meant last Friday’s game took on a life of its own.

All week, the tourists were reminded that Ireland had won five of the last nine games between the sides, while the fall out from the 2023 World Cup quarter-final was recently elevated to front page news with the release of Johnny Sexton’s autobiography  Obsessed. 

Rieko Ioane’s spat with the retired Irish captain became a major talking point but the visitors response to that was to have Ioane lead the kapa o pango haka for the first time. That was a huge personal honour as, not for the first time, the tourists used the haka to make a statement.

The thing that will annoy Farrell most was Ireland’s failure to cope with the pressure the All Blacks managed to impose from the start. That manifested itself in some very poor handling errors and a lack of discipline that continued throughout the game. Some of the post match stats were horrific.

A penalty count of 13 to 5 against Ireland proved very costly, especially with the excellent Damian McKenzie landing six of eight shots at goal to contribute 18 of their 23-point tally. In addition, Ireland made a colossal 21 handling errors and turned the ball over 11 times.

Incredibly, despite missing 30 tackles, they restricted New Zealand to a single try, highlighting just how costly those penalty concessions proved in the end. 

My first impression in the stadium, which was reaffirmed when watching the game back afterwards, was that Ireland defended superbly, especially in the opening half, yet that amount of missed tackles is staggering.

It also didn’t help matters that, once again, the line out faltered with three excellent steals from Tupou Vaa’i and Scott Barrett at key moments. Quite how Ireland persisted in throwing to areas manned by their most effective operators, instead of taking the advantage of mismatches elsewhere, was strange.

Ideally you’d never seek to kick off a November series against New Zealand but that’s not always in your control. 

Ireland now find themselves with another searing challenge against a vastly improved Argentina side who, despite being without the suspended Pablo Matera and injured Santiago Carreras, scored seven tries and 50 points last weekend against an Italian side that not only drew with France in Lille but beat Scotland and Wales in the 2024 Six Nations. More on that challenge on Friday.

The performance of the weekend was delivered by Australia when overcoming England 37-42 in a riveting contest. The Wallabies have been struggling for a long time and this stunning win could not have been better timed.

The failure to make it out of their pool at last year’s World Cup brought an end to Eddie Jones’s controversial - is there ever any other way with him - second stint in charge of Australia. 

Joe Schmidt stepped into the breach for the most challenging coaching role of his career when agreeing to take over the mantle, with the responsibility of making the Wallabies competitive in time for the Lions tour.

Finishing bottom of the pile in the Rugby Championship with one win from six was hardly the start Schmidt had envisaged. At least it left him with a very clear understanding of the magnitude of the challenge he was undertaking.

Given those circumstances, he will be ecstatic with the way they overturned a 15-3 deficit in the first quarter when England were firmly in control. 

He will have even greater cause for celebration with the way Australia attacked a two-point deficit when restarting the game in the 79th minute before regaining possession and score a stunning try in added time for a seismic 37-42 win.

Twickenham was left stunned as England blew a big Test at the death for the second Saturday in-a-row. This win could prove transformative for Schmidt’s men who, once they has a fully fit roster - the likes of Will Skelton only joined up with the squad last week - are capable of being much better than recent results suggest.

The morale-boosting addition of Joseph Sua’ali’i, a rugby union sensation at schools level before being lost to the NRL when leading rugby league side Sydney Roosters signed him in 2021 in a move that encapsulated the problems facing the union game in the sports-mad country.

The Roosters had to apply for a special exemption for Sua’ali’i to make his rugby league debut as he hadn’t yet made his 18th birthday. 

Having more than proved his ability in the league code over the last few seasons Sua’ali’i, who insisted in having a get-out clause in his contract to play union at some stage in the future, became open to negotiations.

In March of 2023, it was confirmed that he was ready to switch codes and play for the Waratahs from 2025 after Rugby Australia agreed to buy him out of his contract for massive money. Given the background, the hype surrounding his first-ever game of professional rugby union against England was enormous. 

Undaunted, the 6’5”, 15st 7lbs centre delivered a player of the match performance on debut.

The net result is that Schmidt’s men will arrive in Dublin for the 150th anniversary of the IRFU at the end of the month in a far better space than when they set out on tour. The next two weeks will dictate exactly where both teams stand at that juncture.

If Farrell thought the quality of opposition might ease up somewhat after the Argentina game, Ireland’s opponents the following week, Fiji, registered their first ever win over Wales in Cardiff on Sunday. 

That’s why they call them Tests.