After one of the great victories, this was one of the great moral victories. Or at least a moral maze. Ireland under Joe Schmidt may always aspire to more, but there is only so much they can do at times, only so much a team can do to be free of history twice in a couple of weeks.
Instead on Saturday at the Aviva, Ireland embraced an anarchic tradition, especially in the second half when it was tempting to view their performance as heroic as they tried to compete against a team who knew which button to press and which trick to play on every occasion.
New Zealand didn’t become a team you beat once in a 111 years by mistaking a rugby field for a church hall. They may have been lucky with the decisions taken by the officials, especially in the opening fifteen minutes, but they gave an impression throughout this brutal game that they were always going to do whatever it took.
Ireland may have left the field with a simmering sense of injustice, yet for all the temptation to talk of heroism, their only score in the second half was a Paddy Jackson penalty, a disappointing return during a dominant spell when New Zealand were down to fourteen men for ten minutes.
The crowd willed something to happen in that time, but Ireland couldn’t score a try or, more precisely, New Zealand wouldn’t let them score a try.
At times, it seemed impossible, but that’s what happens when you beat a team that didn’t expect to be beaten and play them again two weeks later.
From the start, there were baffling decisions by the TMO, the loss of key players through cruel injuries and the failure to exploit the half-chances New Zealand occasionally allowed.
In a game where the rules are as opaque and baffling as rugby’s, it isn’t hard to rustle up a grievance about some decision that takes place in the mysterious world of rucks and mauls. It is sport’s equivalent of conveyancing – and traditionally conducted by the same people – a world of arcane and mysterious regulations where judgments can seem arbitrary.
But here Ireland seemed to have been denied justice in plain sight when Sam Cane stayed on the pitch and the TMO didn’t rule out Beauden Barrett’s try in the opening fifteen minutes.
It was a demoralising start but beforehand nobody knew what to think. Chicago had changed everything, but there was the sense here on Saturday, that everything might just change back. It brought to mind the line from Play It Again, Sam when Woody Allen’s character is set up on a blind date. “I’ve really got mixed feeling about this,” he says excitedly.
In one way, it didn’t matter. If you’ve beaten the All Blacks for the first time after 111 years, it may be too much to expect to do it all again a couple of weeks later and, after all, who really cares.
But in another sense, it mattered a lot. Beforehand, one former Irish international said he had never looked forward to a game as much and he wasn’t a man to get carried away. If rugby matches in November can usually take place with all the atmosphere of the first day of a golf tournament in Austria, this was different.
The fireworks and explosions that accompanied the arrival of the teams didn’t seem too much, instead they may well have captured the mood, or a part of it. Such was the excitement that even the announcement introducing President Higgins and IRFU President Stephen Hilditch was received with a couple of shrieks.
There were no fireworks when Malakai Fekitoa scored the opening try after two-and-a-half minutes of intent and revenge from New Zealand. Sean O’Brien had dropped the ball from kick-off and the All Blacks were unforgiving. “Going to be a long night,” someone said, settling down comfortably for another 111 years of misery.
The failure of the officials to punish Cane for his high tackle on Robbie Henshaw – “He’s taken his head off,” one Irish player roared – or rule that Barrett hadn’t grounded the ball helped create a more familiar narrative, but it wasn’t an unjust one either. New Zealand weren’t going to lose again, that was the message put forward at the outset and one which they delivered relentlessly.
The game might have been different if Cane had been shown a yellow card or Barrett hadn’t been awarded a try, but it was hard to escape the feeling that they weren’t going to allow any more history to be created.
Maybe it would have happened if Henshaw, Sexton and CJ Stander hadn’t been lost so quickly. Without them, Ireland were always going to struggle. But that was the point. New Zealand were here for the struggle. They were here to punish and to remind Ireland why they had waited 111 years for victory.
