Former British & Irish Lions captain Sam Warburton believes Ireland’s tactical prowess should give them the advantage over New Zealand on Saturday.
Ireland will welcome the All Blacks back to Dublin this weekend for a meeting between the top two teams in the world with Joe Schmidt’s side giving the defending world champions a real run in their last three matches.
Ireland will be without both Conor Murray and Dan Leavy for the match, who withdrew on Friday with ‘full body soreness’, but Warburton believes that Ireland’s intelligence and nastiness should get them over the edge for what would be just their second win in 113 years against New Zealand.
“I said at the start of the autumn that Ireland would beat New Zealand today and I am sticking by that,” Warburton wrote in his Times column.
“Why do I think that Ireland will win? It is because they are so tactically astute. They are well coached too. They analyse teams well and then break them down accordingly because of that. They go into great detail. And they have very intelligent players to execute their plans, as well as a nasty edge when needed.
“I always found Ireland to be the hardest team in the Six Nations to play against. It is because they are so good at keeping the ball.
“I remember playing them once on a Saturday and we were playing Italy the following Saturday. On the Friday we were doing lineouts for the Italy game and my shoulders were still sore because we had had to make so many tackles against Ireland six days before.
“Shaun Edwards always used to tell us that, when you play Ireland, you are going to have to make a minimum of 200 tackles. That is always a lot in an international match. The norm is somewhere around 150 or 160.”
Former New Zealand captain Tana Umaga believes the game will ultimately be decided by which side can take advantage of the opponent’s errors and that the All Blacks will ultimately try to test Ireland on the outside.
“We want to test the edge of all the defences that we play against,” said Umaga ahead of the Guinness Series clash.
“One of our strengths is to get around on the outside and really test teams there. We’ve probably developed more now where if it hasn’t worked after a couple of phases, rather than trying to make it work after five or six and not give up position or the ball because of all that pressure that we know the Irish will bring defensively and physically, and I think they realise now that we’ve got to turn that around.
“We’ve got to do what they’re doing to us. It’s really around the execution of the kicking game that is going to be the difference, the contestables being right on the money so we can get up and relieve that pressure by taking that ball and get us into those opportunities.
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“From that pressure, the mistakes that happen, that’s when I think teams pounce. That’s what we’re working off now. Everyone is working off errors. Trying to create pressure by being physical and swarming in their defence. As soon as that happens it’s structure from the unstructured.
“There is certain structure and the individual gets to express themselves – like a Beauden Barrett, a Ben Smith, Rieko Ioane – when they get that ball in space that’s when we’re looking for a one-on-one opportunities with someone that is isolated, hopefully a tight forward, that you’re looking for standing in the wrong place and then we can see those cues straight away and go to that space.
“You’re trying to take advantage of that unstructured before they get structured. With the Irish, and with the All Blacks, every team is trying to get structured as soon as we can but then it’s just a race.”
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