The All Blacks will play Ireland in Dublin on Saturday for the first time since their epic World Cup encounter last year. It was one of the all-time classics in Paris – New Zealand once again breaking Irish hearts with a 27-24 victory. But it has transpired that there was genuine bad blood between the two teams, with former captain Johnny Sexton revealing in his autobiography that he and Rieko Ioane had an ugly spat after the final
whistle. Gregor Paul looks at how this conflict began and escalated.
The All Blacks, entirely understandably, had brewed themselves into quite the rage in the days that followed their historic first loss to Ireland in 2016.
They were mad at themselves, not so much for losing at Soldier Field, but for delivering an abject first 50 minutes that were about as wild and ragged as any All Blacks team had produced in the professional era.
New Zealand conceded penalties, dropped balls, missed tackles, was shown yellow cards, couldn’t win lineouts and were so bad that after 50 minutes, they were 30-8 behind.
Then-head coach Steve Hansen, a man who firmly believed that preparation determined every aspect of performance, made his feelings clear to the players that they had failed to get anywhere near living up to All Blacks standards.
He tore them apart behind closed doors. Raged at them for spending too much time getting caught up in the celebrations of the Chicago Cubs – the local baseball team who, just a few days before the test, had won their first World Series in 108 years.
He was angry that players had broken their usual routines, that they had attended the Cubs’ victory parade, spending hours on their feet the day before the test.
It was the first loss the All Blacks had experienced in 18 tests, and while Hansen knew that the day would always come when the world record run of consecutive victories would end, he never imagined it would be surrendered so meekly.
But there was another factor niggling the All Blacks after that 40-29 loss in Chicago. Ireland had enjoyed it too much – had let the celebrations linger a little long.
Of course, they had enjoyed it, for the first time in 111 years of trying, they had beaten the All Blacks. It was a hugely emotional and significant moment, but unfortunately for Ireland, the All Blacks had developed a deep dislike of teams beating them and then over-celebrating.
The All Blacks had developed a sense of guardianship that led them to believe they were the sole arbiters of determining how much celebrating was appropriate.
The combination of their failings in Chicago and Ireland’s prolonged joyousness had stirred the All Blacks into quite an agitated state by the time they arrived in Dublin two weeks later for a rematch.
Hansen had held off reviewing the first test until the team had landed in Dublin for the second – they had played Italy in between but largely with all the players who hadn’t featured in the USA.
For the better part of an hour, the players were treated to an annihilation by their coach – their discipline, their professionalism, their commitment and their character were all questioned.
“What sticks out about this review is there was a bit of embarrassment from us when you see some of the footy,” an almost shell-shocked Sam Cane said a few hours afterwards. “And you see that’s not what we are about, that’s pretty poor footy.
“There was certainly an uncomfortable feel in the room, which was good.”
Hansen had needled his team to provoke a response in attitude, but he didn’t imagine it would take the direction it did.
What ensued was the most brutal 80 minutes of rugby seen in the professional age. It was wild at times, reckless almost and the Irish were upset that Cane was only shown a yellow for what was deemed to be an accidental head clash with Gary Ringrose.
They were yet madder when Malakai Fekitoa was also only shown yellow for a high tackle on Simon Zebo – their anger shifting off the scale when the All Blacks centre returned to score the winning try and secure a 21-9 victory.
“That game in Dublin was simply a reaction to Chicago,” defence coach Wayne Smith would reveal in Hansen’s biography, Steve Hansen: The Legacy.
“We had just set a world record of 18 test wins in a row and there was absolutely no doubt that in Chicago there wasn’t the same intensity in the build-up.
“We took our eye off the ball a wee bit and it hurt and if you look back now, we could have set the winning streak at 23 or 24 if we had won that game.
“But we didn’t and so in that Dublin test there was a heightened sense of revenge. I think we made 283 tackles and that is the most I’ve ever been involved with and they were brutal.”
The brutality wasn’t missed by the Irish players, fans or media, with Clare MacNamara of host broadcaster RTE getting into a spat with Hansen immediately after the game live on TV.
She asked a variation of the same question three times – all of which related to the nature of the All Blacks’ defence. “I’m not sure where you’re going with this, do you want me to tell you we’re a dirty side or something? Is that what you’re saying?”
It wasn’t the leading questions or implied accusation that stunned Hansen, it was the sense that Ireland had no self-awareness or appreciation of their role in the contest.
The All Blacks were certainly fortunate that Fekitoa’s card was only yellow – it would be upgraded to red at a judicial hearing – but Ireland made plenty of impact themselves.
There were high tackles, neck rolls, brutal, shuddering hits from the side of rucks and Hansen expected that both sides would acknowledge that they had been involved in an epic contest where they had pushed the laws to the limit.
Instead, Ireland appeared to be bitter about the nature of the game, seemingly of the view they had been passive bystanders at Aviva Stadium, and the following day, their team manager Mick Kearney would tell the media that 12 incidents were put in front of the citing commissioner, and 11 of them were committed by the All Blacks.
And there it was – further proof in the eyes of the All Blacks that Ireland were all smiles and handshakes when they won, but sour and whiny when they lost.
However irritated Hansen had been by MacNamara, he was much more infuriated by Kearney, and on the Sunday after the test, he pulled the Herald aside to make his feelings clear that he and his team had lost a bit of respect for the Irish.
It’s no doubt just as true that Ireland lost a little bit of respect for the All Blacks after that cataclysmic match in Dublin.
New Zealand may have seen Ireland as whiners but the Irish saw the All Blacks as bullies – their pride hurt by losing in Chicago, they responded not with clever, controlled, precision rugby but with organised brutality.
However, some of these new feelings were a natural consequence of the changing power dynamic between the two.
For more than 100 years, the relationship had been clearly defined – the All Blacks were the dominant partners, assigned the role of winning, while Ireland played the happy-go-lucky losers, always brave and willing and even more importantly, up for a laugh afterwards.
Once Ireland had secured their first win and became capable of winning more, neither country found it easy transitioning into the new roles in which they had been cast.
The All Blacks found it easier to love playing Ireland when they weren’t a threat, and the Irish didn’t feel comfortable carrying the pressure of higher expectations after they had secured that first win in 2016.
No one knew this better than Hansen, who could sense that in November 2018, Ireland, ranked No 2 to New Zealand’s No 1, didn’t like the idea of being billed as the favourites against the All Blacks.
He also suspected that Ireland didn’t want to be built up as the better team coming into World Cup year, and so, with enormous strategic calculation, Hansen told the media that he thought whichever team won in Dublin would have to be considered favourites to win the World Cup.
This was a tactical masterstroke from Hansen because Ireland beat the All Blacks on November 17 and then proceeded to be crushed by the pressure that weighed upon them after that.
A team that were almost unbeatable in 2018 reached the World Cup as a team unsure of itself and once again, their dream of going past the quarter-final was smashed by a rampant All Blacks side that tore them apart in Tokyo.
The All Blacks knew exactly how much psychological damage they had inflicted on Ireland by once again killing their dream of making it into the last four – and maybe they enjoyed their moment a little too much.
There was a bit of venom in the try celebrations – which reflected how seriously the All Blacks took Ireland.
It was also partially indicative of how a newfound edge had developed between them – a heightened sense of awareness about what each said of the other in the media.
But ultimately what the All Blacks couldn’t hide in Tokyo was that they weren’t massive fans of Ireland’s captain Johnny Sexton.
They could see he was a brilliant player, but he had an endless desire to berate referees, to question their every decision, to niggle them whenever he could.
After 20 minutes of the November test between New Zealand and Ireland in Dublin, referee Luke Pearce snapped at Sexton.
He’d just awarded a scrum but Sexton was agitating for something to be reviewed and the decision to be reconsidered.
“You do your team, I’ll do mine,” Pearce said to Sexton. “I don’t tell your team how to play moves so please don’t tell my team. We don’t play referrals, we are doing our jobs.”
It was at this point that All Blacks hooker Dane Coles intervened to gesture to Sexton to retreat while saying to Pearce: “F***, he’s a mouthy c*** isn’t he?”
Bizarrely, the Irish commentators for host broadcasters RTE seemed to side with Coles. “The criticism of him [Sexton] is that when he gets in this kind of form, he annoys referees and gets them offside. You can’t be yapping at the referee all the time and that is where [Richie] McCaw was brilliant.”
Asked about it after Ireland had won 29-20, Sexton said: “I was speaking to the ref and they were taking offence that I was speaking to the ref. I wasn’t saying anything out of line, I don’t think.”
Clearly, the All Blacks disagreed with Sexton’s assessment and they did feel he was trying to referee the game, or at least have undue influence over him.
Certainly, when Ireland came to New Zealand eight months later to play a three-test series, battle lines had been drawn and the animosity between the two was hidden only by the thinnest veneer.
The All Blacks won the first test 42-19 in what appeared to be a mostly incident-free game.
But a few days later, the All Blacks were told by World Rugby that they should have been shown four yellow cards, not just the one that was picked up by prop Karl Tu’inukuafe.
It was a stunning assessment and one that made the All Blacks question how much influence Ireland had with the global body and why they were always seeing major acts of foul play by New Zealand that went undetected during the game.
What also troubled the All Blacks was that Sexton came off in the first test after half an hour, having failed an HIA. Sam Whitelock didn’t fail an HIA but self-reported concussion symptoms.
Whitelock was withdrawn from the second test, but Sexton played, and having been told they should have been heavily punished the week before, the All Blacks were shown two yellow cards and one red after 30 minutes of the second test.
It probably didn’t help that the referee in Dunedin for that second test was Jaco Peyper, the same referee who Ireland felt had been massively lenient when he had charge of the test in Dublin.
The real kicker came close to the end of the game, however, when Irish flanker Peter O’Mahony got involved in a bit of push-and-shove with Sam Cane and said to the All Blacks flanker: “Who do you think you are pal? You are a s*** Richie McCaw.”
Ireland had the game won by halftime and were able to remove Sexton with 20 minutes left.
As he came to the sideline, he was met by Coles who asked him: “What the f*** are you looking at?”
Sexton supposedly shrugged and said: “I’m not sure.”
Ireland won the third test and the series, playing high-quality rugby, and proved they were the better team.
And yet for all that even New Zealanders wouldn’t dispute that, Ireland were still afforded a major stroke of good fortune when their prop Andrew Porter was yellow- and not red-carded in the third test.
He came into contact with his forearm raised and with enough impact to break Brodie Retallick’s cheek with a direct blow to the face.
But referee Wayne Barnes ruled that Retallick had absorbed the blow and hence used that as mitigation.
The day after the All Blacks had beaten Uruguay in their final pool game of the 2023 World Cup, coach Ian Foster said he not only expected his team would be playing Ireland in the quarter-final, he effectively said he wanted this team to be playing Ireland in the quarter-final.
He felt the All Blacks were ready to play the team who had handed them an abject lesson the year before.
After that series loss in July 2022, assistant All Blacks coaches Brad Moaar and John Plumtree were sacked and Foster himself was told by his chief executive that the performances had been unacceptable.
Ireland had exposed New Zealand’s outdated defensive systems. They had shown that the All Blacks didn’t know how to defend a rolling maul or set a good attacking one; that they were not able to hold possession for long enough and that their general pass-and-catch was lacking the requisite sharpness to compete with the best teams in the world.
Ireland had hurt the All Blacks, but in doing so, they had also done them a massive favour because, between August 2022 and October 2023, New Zealand had been focused on one thing – raising their standards to where they needed to be to win a World Cup quarter-final.
Playing Ireland, as opposed to South Africa, would also come with a different vibe entirely – one in which the All Blacks would have a heightened sense of having a point to prove, given the controversial nature of the series in 2022.
It wasn’t just that Ireland had won in 2022, it was the way they had won and the things had been said.
That the All Blacks were on edge in the build-up to the quarter-final last year was obvious. They were tense in all their media engagements and economical with their words.
A big hint that something was lurking deep under the surface came when Retallick was asked to give his memories of the 2022 series, saying: “I remember getting a fractured cheek. I haven’t forgotten about that one.”
That was enough to be sure that New Zealand hadn’t forgotten what O’Mahony had said, how Sexton had behaved and what Porter had done.
The 80 minutes were incredible – among the best in history – and while the All Blacks should have been magnanimous in victory, they weren’t.
As Sexton revealed in his autobiography, Rieko Ioane said to him on the final whistle: “Don’t miss your flight tomorrow. Enjoy your retirement, you c***.”
Retallick admits he shook O’Mahony’s hand and said: “Oi Peter, four more years you f****wit.”
The pain for Ireland would have been intense. For the second tournament running, they had dominated the All Blacks during the cycle, only to lose in the quarter-final and preserve their unwanted record of never having made it further than that.
The All Blacks are their World Cup nemeses, and that fact alone has brewed animosity.
But the tension runs much deeper and will again this week in Dublin, as Ireland have every right to feel aggrieved about the way things ended in Paris and to feel that they were disrespected.
All Blacks v Ireland, Saturday 9.10am. Live commentary on Newstalk ZB, Gold Sport and iHeartRadio. Live match blog at nzherald.co.nz
Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and has written several books about sport.