New Zealand captain Scott Barrett accused Joe McCarthy of a “below the line” shot on Damian McKenzie during Friday’s victory over Ireland.
Simmering tensions threatened to boil over in the 13th minute during a scuffle involving Barrett and his opposite number McCarthy, who Barrett felt had deliberately targeted All Blacks fly-half Damian McKenzie following a ruck.
McKenzie shook off the early attention to kick 18 points as New Zealand ran out convincing 23-13 victors to end Ireland’s 19-game winning streak at the Aviva Stadium.
“I don’t usually take exception but I saw something that was, I guess, below the line for me,” said Barrett, whose side built on last weekend’s 24-22 win over England at Twickenham to knock Ireland off the top of the world rankings.
“I guess you had to make a point, ‘you’re not targeting our 10 tonight’. It looked like Damian was on the ground and Joe cleaned him up.
“From where I saw it it looked like it was around his head. It looked like a bit of a shoulder to a man on the ground.”
Ireland went into their autumn opener as favourites before crashing to a first home loss since France won at an empty Aviva Stadium during the 2021 Six Nations.
Will Jordan’s 37th try in 39 Tests sealed a deserved success for the All Blacks, adding to McKenzie’s six penalties.
Farrell: Ireland players ‘gutted’ after rare home loss
A dejected James Lowe after the final whistle
Ireland, who were beaten by New Zealand in the quarter-finals of last year’s Rugby World Cup, conceded 13 penalties across the course of a stop-start affair and were unable to build on a 13-9 lead following Josh van der Flier’s score early in the second half.
Ireland head coach Andy Farrell said: “[I’m] disappointed. It’s easily summed up with the mood of the dressing room, really: it’s pretty sombre.
“The lads are gutted, we’re all gutted together. I thought we prepped well, trained well, I thought we were excited about the game and we were.
“We didn’t manage to put our game out on the field. Obviously the opposition have a big say in that but I thought we compounded too many errors and almost suppressed ourselves a little bit at times.
“The accuracy wasn’t what was needed to win a big Test match like that.”
Josh van der Flier’s try minutes after the restart put Ireland back in front but they failed to score again
Ireland had a man advantage when Van der Flier plundered the game’s opening try in the 43rd minute due to Jordie Barrett being sin-binned for a high tackle on Garry Ringrose just before the break.
However, repeated infringements sucked life out of the capacity crowd and decisively swung the encounter back in New Zealand’s favour.
Defeat for Ireland was only a second on home soil during the Farrell era.
“It’s a funny old feeling because we don’t tend to have it too much in that dressing room,” said Farrell.
“That’s life, congratulations to New Zealand. There’s no excuses for us. The opposition, long story short, deserved to win. I actually thought the game was stop-start, it was a bit scrappy.
“There were a lot of errors, because of the weather a little bit. It was a slow enough game at times and we needed to be in charge of looking after our energy and we didn’t do that well enough.”
Ireland’s Autumn Nations Series fixtures
Nov 8: Ireland 13-23 New Zealand
Nov 15: Ireland vs Argentina (8.10pm)
Nov 23: Ireland vs Fiji (3.10pm)
Nov 30: Ireland vs Australia (3.10pm)