All Blacks v Ireland: Scott Robertson’s side show brains over brawn to silence Dublin – Gregor Paul

Will Jordan is congratulated by All Blacks teammate Damian McKenzie after scoring against Ireland. Photo / Getty Images

THREE KEY FACTS

• The All Blacks earned their first victory in Dublin since 2016 with a 23-13 triumph against Ireland.
• Scott Robertson’s side delivered arguably their most cohesive performance to date.
• Damian McKenzie delivered a man-of-the-match performance in the No 10 jersey.

Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and written several books about sport.

OPINION

That New Zealand’s victory in Dublin was underpinned by a depth of character, resilience and muscular grunt was no surprise.

These are qualities that have been present, albeit the grunt has at times been intermittent, throughout the past five years.

Win or lose, there has never been any sense of the All Blacks having slipped a little in the rankings because of some newfound psychological frailty or lack of commitment to the cause.

But what did carry a surprise element was the depth of rugby intelligence that was on show from the All Blacks in Dublin.

It was a victory as much for brain as it was for brawn, the performance notable for its astute decision-making which produced an effective balance of kick, pass and run, while there was a demonstrable appreciation of the value of territory and possession.

For the first time this year, the All Blacks looked like a test team playing international rugby rather than an amalgamation of Super Rugby Pacific players trying to get their heads around how to implement what appeared to be the Crusaders game plan with a few additional extras.

Everyone seemingly has theories about why New Zealand has struggled on the world stage in recent years, but at the core of their demise has been a lack of intuitive game management and an ingrained knowledge about how to piece together an effective strategy to succeed in test rugby.

Perhaps it was the isolation of Covid and the removal of the South Africans from Super Rugby, but somewhere along the way in the last few years, New Zealand lost the art of playing test football.

Not necessarily the component parts as such, but the ability to know how to string them all together, how to absorb and apply pressure, how to read the Circadian rhythms, if you like, of a brand of the game that would be no closer a relative to Super Rugby than, say, a human is to an orangutan.

They obviously could get it right some of the time, but not all the time and there was a definitive sense that come the biggest games, the All Blacks would lack the same strategic nous as the likes of Ireland, France, and South Africa.

The art of playing international rugby and tapping into its strategic nuances was building strongly in former All Blacks coach Ian Foster’s final year, but there was an inevitable reset and re-learning phase to endure when Scott Robertson and his coaching group took over a squad this year that also introduced several new players.

And, just as it was the quarter-final against Ireland in which Foster’s All Blacks produced their most intelligent display, the same opponents drew out the most astute performance to date from Robertson’s team.

When the All Blacks found themselves under huge pressure early in the second half in Dublin, they had the ability to think and play their way through that period, wrestle back the momentum and then slowly squeeze the life out of Ireland.

There was clarity in captain Scott Barrett’s decision-making around when to scrum for penalties and once they had been won, when to kick for goal and when to kick for the corner.

The All Blacks’ exit plays were considered, accurate and effective – executed with a sense of confidence that suggested they understand how important it is to not get caught up playing inside their own 22.

And of course, there was a man-of-the-match performance from Damian McKenzie who, intuitively, knew how to balance his game to keep Ireland under pressure.

There was nothing hurried or ill-advised about his decision-making and he just about perfectly judged when it was best to be playing with the ball and when to be playing without it.

Essentially, what he did – arguably for the first time this year – was damage an opponent more with his boot than his natural running game, and it wasn’t the sight of him buzzing about in the traffic that flummoxed the Irish, but his ability to pin them into corners that they didn’t want to be in.

“I think we are building really nicely as a team and it is not really about proving a point or making a statement, it was just about playing our best rugby and there were patches there where we saw that,” McKenzie said.

“In test matches you have got to win wee moments, and we were able to do that. The way we played in the first half was great. We managed to put the ball in front of our forwards and they were able to build some great momentum for us.

“There have been times throughout the year when my game management has been a massive work on. Tonight it was about trying to win the small moments and to make the job as easy as possible for our forwards.

“And you do that by winning the kicking battle and that was a big focus this week. I did a better job tonight, still got a lot to learn, but happy with the way it worked out.”

It has perhaps taken longer than Robertson would have liked for his team to have rediscovered that lost art of playing international rugby, although maybe he too would feel that he and his coaching team have taken a little longer to understand it themselves.

But the win in Dublin against the best team in the world has created a sense that the 2024 All Blacks are now starting to find the level that their 2023 predecessors reached at the World Cup.