The All Blacks take on Ireland at their Eden Park fortress on Saturday. Photo / Photosport
The All Blacks take on Ireland at their Eden Park fortress on Saturday. Photo / Photosport
OPINION:
Eden Park isn't exactly on brand. It's sold to the world as the home of the All Blacks as if it reflects their core values of excellence, innovation and unity of purpose, when in actuality, it's a multi-million dollar monument to bureaucratic incompetence and indecision.
It's an ad hoc,curious mix of randomly designed stands which are neither modern enough to be called state of the art, nor quaint enough to be considered to have old world charm.
It's so betwixt and between to not even be a multi-purpose stadium as it's too big for rugby, not big enough for cricket and now, apparently, not well enough policed as to be an appropriate venue for schools to hold their balls there without them turning into the last days of Rome.
And absolutely unlike the All Blacks, Eden Park does not have a strong and deep connection with the community as it has a long and troubled relationship with its residential neighbours who see it as a confused monolith that serves none of its many masters and exists in its current form only because New Zealand, afflicted with pettiness and frugality, couldn't get its act together to build the Helen Clark Dome on Auckland's waterfront in 2006.
The All Blacks and Eden Park are an odd and ill-fitting partnership.
The history of one does not reflect the other and who, when considering the values of the All Blacks, looks at the higgledy-piggledy Eden Park, unloved and unwanted by so many, and sees it as the perfect home for the world's most successful sports team?
And yet this odd couple have somehow built the most durable and formidable relationship.
This charmless suburban ground has become a huge part of the All Blacks story.
Sports teams love branding their home venue a fortress, but few rarely get close to being anything of the kind.
England are hard to beat at Twickenham. It's a stadium loaded with history and its towering stands and immaculate turf give it a hallowed feel, yet as tough as it is for visiting sides to win there, many do.
Ellis Park is another that is branded a fortress, but the All Blacks have proven almost impossible to beat there, too. The last time the Boks beat New Zealand at their citadel was 2014.
No country and no team can lay claim to having anything like the record the All Blacks do at Eden Park who have not lost there in the professional era.
General view of Eden Park during the All Blacks' win over the Wallabies last year. Photo / Photosport
All the best teams of the last 28 years have come to Auckland, brimming with confidence, full of belief and hope only to go home chastened and empty handed.
Fans here bemoan the in-stadia experience, but it's visiting players who have the thin end of the Eden Park wedge.
It's a horrid, intimidating, hopeless place for visiting teams and however much they try to claim that the venue has no bearing on their mind-set or preparation, it's mainly said to convince themselves rather than anyone else.
The enormity of what the All Blacks have achieved at Eden Park has created an aura that translates into a source of tangible pressure.
And Ireland will most definitely be feeling that pressure this week. They will talk publicly of the record being a source of motivation for them – a chance to be not only the first team from Ireland to win in New Zealand, but to also be the ones to break the 45-match unbeaten run.
Privately, however, they will fear that the All Blacks have become almost unbeatable in Auckland because how else to explain such a prolonged and devastating period of dominance?
Ireland will know that some challengers have come oh so close to the coveted win. England in 2014, France in the 2011 World Cup final and the Lions in 2017 secured a draw.
But somehow the All Blacks have drawn some mystical power from the rickety stands of Eden Park and found a way to stay unbeaten since 1994.
The pressure of preserving the record seems to be a more powerful motivation than the lure of trying to be the first to break it and there is a fair chance, no matter what Ireland say this week, that they will already, somewhere in the back of their heads, have accepted that getting close on Saturday night will be as much as they can expect.
It takes a monumental effort to beat the All Blacks anywhere in the world. Even last year when they were outplayed in Dublin for most of the game, barely had the ball or any run of possession, they still ended up just one pass away from the most unlikely and undeserved win.
But to beat the All Blacks at Eden Park will take a nearly unimaginable effort by Ireland and they know it.
Eden Park, in all of its mis-matched, consumer unfriendly glory, has become the most accidental hero.
