If the fearful-looking kabuki masks tattooed on Mack Hansen’s arms could tell their stories, not all of them would be entirely happy.
The one about the 38th meeting of Ireland and New Zealand could be summed up by the lugubrious face on his right side, which says it all. In Hansen’s first match back Ireland fell flat, no longer the norm against the All Blacks. The defeat was wounding.
The 26-year-old had not played since the beginning of January, when he dislocated his shoulder against Munster, an injury that caused him to miss Ireland’s Six Nations championship and summer tour of South Africa.
Fit again after Calvin Nash proved a worthy deputy, but falling to a better New Zealand side, Hansen can see two both sides of the coin – collective disappointment but also back on the horse again after some soul searching about whether he would ever get the chance to play again for Ireland.
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“You get to a period of being injured, especially as long as I was, that you never know if you’re going to get the opportunity again,” he says.
“Things like that kind of go through your head, especially with the way the guys were playing. Still winning Six Nations and winning tours, when I was away.
“A lot of guys really stepped up and played great, like Nashy and Jamie [Osborne] and those sorts of guys coming through. So yeah, things like that do go through your head and to get it again was just it was another dream come true almost.
“It’s not like I was out of the team and things were going badly. It’s a hard one to kind of navigate through. Saying that, obviously very happy for how the team and how the guys were going but on the other hand you are thinking from time-to-time, ‘ah geez will I get my shot again?’ To be able to get it has been a privilege.”
If nothing else, Hansen’s introspection showcases the mental aspect of elite sport and how confidence can rock either way. The right wing has 22 Irish caps and nine tries, which makes for an impressive strike rate.
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But his last outing with Ireland before injury stretches back to the All Blacks’ win in last year’s World Cup quarter-final and his last international try was against South Africa in the pool match before that.
It’s a long time away from the green shirt and playing the right wing position, even for a player like Hansen who goes looking for the ball, is also tempered by how the rest of the team plays, especially the pack and whether quick possession is secured and available.
A number of things must be in place before scoring opportunities open up. That was the pity of his first game back, the collective Irish performance outage.
“I found it was a pretty hard game for me to get into as a winger,” he says. “I felt sort of every time I tried to get involved and get a hand on the ball, it just seemed to fall apart a little bit. But you get games like that unfortunately.
“I tried to flip my mindset a bit and just try and get my hands on the ball as much as I could. I feel like I did that in the last 10/15 [minutes] maybe a little bit more involved but now working on just doing that for the whole 80. It felt like it just didn’t come my way.”
In a sea change of attitude in recent years from fans and players alike regarding the All Blacks, the focus has fallen on Ireland stepping down a performance grade and less about how New Zealand played a clever hand. The obvious disparity between the World Cup performance and last Friday is both illuminating and curious, but there is no need to trigger alarm bells.
“It just wasn’t who we are or who we’ve come to be over the last three or four years,” he says. “We’ve made the Aviva a fortress for sure and we haven’t really put out any bad performances out there. I think we didn’t click as well as we normally do.
“Yeah, very disappointed. But saying that I thought New Zealand played really well. You could put it on the other hand and say they sort of made us play that way. I thought they were a little bit more strategic than normal. I think when you think of New Zealand teams they throw the ball around a lot, attack from anywhere and they’ve been the best at that for a good while.
“There’s a lot of hard chats, a lot of honest talks on why things went that way which we’ve had. It’s just making sure that doesn’t happen again.”
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