Ireland are braced for a vengeful All Blacks side in next Saturday night’s World Cup quarter-final in Paris following last year’s historic series win. Ahead of Ireland’s 36-14 win over Scotland, Beauden Barrett declared New Zealand wanted to face Andy Farrell’s side, no doubt mindful that they were their likely quarter-final opponents anyway, so as to gain revenge for that series defeat.
Johnny Sexton even referenced Barrett’s comments in his post-match press conference on Saturday night. And speaking on Sunday morning, defence coach Simon Easterby said: “Whatever you say about that series, it would have hurt them to lose at home against us.
“But we’re just trying to focus on what we can do really well and I think on the whole we did that last night. There are parts of our game that we can get better at and undoubtedly conceding a couple of tries late on was disappointing. But the lads put an incredible shift in and we probably missed a few chances as well to score some points.
“I think what happened last summer is still probably in the back of their minds and certainly it’s human nature that would be the case. But at the end of the day Saturday is a different environment, it’s a totally different game, it’s a neutral venue and we’re going to have to be right on top of our game to beat a New Zealand team.”
Ireland will also be crossing swords with former head coach Joe Schmidt and scrum coach Greg Feek, and Easterby said he would wait until after the match before making contact with them. But he admitted Schmidt’s influence is greater now than it was when called in on a consultancy basis before last year’s series.
“I’m sure Joe’s influence certainly has increased in the past 12 months, but we’ve got to be excited about playing the standard bearers of the World Cup.
“New Zealand have always turned up for World Cups and we’ve seen the way they’ve dealt with a little bit of adversity in the pre-season game against South Africa. And then the game against France could have gone either way to be honest, and they’ve built nicely in the last few weeks in terms of their performances and the way they want to play.
“Certainly Joe will know plenty about what we’re about, the individuals within our group, but we’ll have an insight as well into what they might try and do as well.
“So, I think it’s finely balanced and it’s an interesting subplot to the game itself.”
Unsurprisingly, Easterby had no further update on Ireland’s trio of injury concerns arising out of the win over Scotland, namely Mack Hansen (calf), James Lowe (eye) and James Ryan (wrist).
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“No, it’s difficult to say at the moment – 12 hours out of the game, it’s mad when there’s a late kick-off. We’re getting used to them, but we’ve got to give time for injuries to settle and guys to get assessed.
“It’ll be the next 24-48 hours where we’ll get a good read on those guys, everyone’s in good form but there’s a bit of work to be done in the next 24-48 hours to assess those guys that had bumps.”
Robbie Henshaw, who was ruled out of last Saturday’s game, and Keith Earls both have hamstring issues, although Easterby said both would be running on Sunday “and will sort of be progressing into training Monday or Tuesday”.
As to their availability for the quarter-final, Easterby said: “It’s probably a little too early to say either way, but if they get ruled out, Jimmy’s [O’Brien] been waiting in the wings and did an incredible job last November to come in with a couple of late call-ups. There’s no issue with Jimmy if he gets an opportunity and hopefully we’ll have a full deck to choose from come Tuesday or Wednesday.”
Easterby was entitled to feel satisfied with a good night’s work in his domain, namely defence, where his side’s tally of 202 tackles was the second highest in any match in this tournament, even if there were 28 missed.
Defying the Scots off three penalties to the corner, notably when driving them back almost 20 metres in a 19-phase defensive set in that first 15 minutes, drew a line in the sand.
“Yeah, it’s been said before but I think this team understands how important the defence is to the overall success of the team. We work incredibly hard on being disciplined and not giving sides any access, and credit to the players, the way they go about their business. You can sense the feeling of excitement when the opposition have the ball, it’s a chance for us to put a stop to their attack and take a bit of energy away from them as well.”
Coupled with a higher ball in play time of 34 minutes and 33 seconds, there were times in the last quarter when both sides looked to be blowing hard.
“The conditioning is good, I don’t think that’s an issue,” maintained Easterby. “For us, the way we want to play the game is with speed of ball, we want to keep the ball alive but we also need to manage the game as well and bring a balance to the way we want to play.
“That’s something we need to look at in the next couple of days, so that when we get opportunities like we did against Scotland we take them, but also that we need to make sure we play in the right areas of the pitch, manage our energy so that when we have opportunities we’re on point.”
