Ireland’s two-week stay atop the World rankings in September 2019 always felt distinctly uncomfortable at the time given the team’s inconsistent form that year. Sure enough it proved a bad omen for the World Cup. But sitting on top of the world today after completing an historic and titanic comeback series win over the All Blacks doesn’t feel out of place at all.
Indeed, short of winning the World Cup, it’s hard to think what could actually top this.
Becoming only the fifth team in history to win a series over the All Blacks in New Zealand in 60-plus such ventures by all comers - emulating South Africa in 1937, the Lions in 1971, Australia in 1986 and France in 1994 - is a landmark achievement in its own right, perhaps the high water mark in the history of Irish rugby.
It’s no fluke either. The sense that something special was building under Andy Farrell, especially after his masterstroke in hiring Paul O’Connell, hardened as Ireland won 12 of their 13 Tests prior to this series.
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But the response to the losses in both Paris and now in Auckland over the last two weeks confirmed as much. This is a special Irish team and, if not already, capable of becoming the best Irish team ever.
Farrell inherited a sizeable legacy from Joe Schmidt and, in his own comparatively benign way, has both replenished and added layers to this team in personnel, ambition, mental strength and resilience. The unprecedented success of this tour wouldn’t have been possible without possessing all those ingredients, and in spades.
Taking on two additional games against the Maoris seemed borderline masochistic, so to recover from losing the opening two games to then win the last three made it an even more rewarding tour.
Yet even he wondered if he asked too much.
“Every day. Every day,” he admitted. “I asked too much of much of myself and the staff as well but that was the point, to see whether we had excuses, to see whether we had people who just go tunnel vision and start worrying about themselves instead of ‘team first’ – because that’s a big mantra of ours.
“So that way we was always going to get the learnings that we were craving. Of course there’s a bit of luck here and there but there was never any excuses. Only these guys know – the people that’s part of the group know the truth. We put them under some immense pressure on purpose and they never missed a beat.
“Not one person had an excuse, not one person gave out about anything. They’ve been unbelievably easy to manage and they’ve all bought in and therefore to come away with what is the hardest thing to do in world rugby under those conditions, is pretty special.”
More than anything Farrell wanted to test and see further growth in the squad’s mental strength.
“And you’ve seen it in abundance. The best part of the game, like I said before, was when they came back at us, we stayed neutral. We never missed a beat, we got back on track. We knew that they were always gonna have a big purple patch because that’s what they always do. I thought we was mentally very tough and we’re getting better at that.
“Are we anywhere near where we want to be? We’re not. We’re definitely not. You might think that’s me just throwing that out there but it’s the truth. You’ve got this fellow (Sexton). We’ve got people telling us to keep him at home (before we go) so we can build something. But what an opportunity it would have been to see how it’s properly done, to prepare a team, to be a world class player and to believe so much that little old Ireland can beat New Zealand in New Zealand. That’s why you bring your best players, so they can grow the group.
As to the notion of Ireland peaking too soon before a World Cup again, Farrell countered: “It’s about growth and learning the lessons from the tour so it’s up to us to make sure that we keep on going. But let’s not be scared by a little bit of success, y’know. Hitting the straps too early again? Couldn’t be any further from our minds. The only focus for us is: Keep pushing forward.”
Central to it all, of course, as captain, tactical linchpin, goal-kicker and defensive cog in the 10 channel with 14 tackles, was the astonishing Johnny Sexton in the week he turned 37.
He pinpointed the Twickenham game as an example of the team’s mental growth in the white heat of battle when the tide is against them.
“Yeah, it’s something that we’ve worked on strongly since the world cup, really – Faz initially and then Gary Keegan coming in and having a big role to play,” explained Sexton. “But it doesn’t just change automatically. It’s been gradual. I think we saw some improvements through the Six Nations where the thing swung when we’re playing against 14 men and we bounced back from that.
Maintaining the theme, Sexton added: “It’s only 18 months ago that we were being written off altogether so that shows it as well, that shows fortitude. It would be amazing to go and pick out some of the articles that were written 18 months ago about us, about me. But it’s amazing, you know what I mean? It would be good to go back and look and keep our feet on the ground. It shows how strong we are mentally to do that.”
Sexton started all three games in succession despite some typically wild speculation about his well-being and lazy, loose references to the inaccurate comments by a French doctor that he’d had over 30 concussions, even though the same doctor subsequently apologised to Sexton. In the days following the first Test defeat, amid the overtly negative reaction back home, it was open season on Johnny, as usual.
That he started all three Tests and starred in the two Irish wins also rather countered the rationale by Warren Gatland and Gregor Townsend for not picking the Irish captain on last year’s Lions tour. That decision looked wrong then and looks even more wrong now, but maybe the Lions’ loss was Ireland’s and Sexton’s gain.
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For the most part, knowledgeable Kiwis were unstintingly generous in acknowledging that Ireland played some wonderful rugby and deserved their success. Ian Foster was first among them, which was possibly a means of deflecting from his own and his assistants besieged coaching ticket.
Their scheduled press conference yesterday was cancelled, whereupon the New Zealand Rugby chief executive Mark Robinson issued a statement.
“Congratulations to the Irish team for their well-deserved win last night but clearly the performance across the series for the All Blacks was not acceptable as we know they have reflected. We all know there is a huge amount of work to do. Our focus now is to work with Ian and his team to understand thoroughly in advance of the Rugby Championship what is needed to improve performance and where to from here. We will begin this work immediately.”
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It wasn’t exactly a statement of faith, nor was it the dreaded vote of confidence from the football chairman, more a final two-week trial for the upcoming two Rugby Championship games away to South Africa at altitude.
It will be interesting to see if Joe Schmidt, whose role in the first week was perhaps overplayed in hindsight, is more hands-on now than just a technical adviser and how the All Blacks perform in those two games against South Africa especially.
