Why Ireland have reaped the whirlwind

“They that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind” – the meaning of that proverb was brought home when I was working for Stuart Lancaster and England back in 2012.

At the very end of that year, we upset the applecart (and all known form) by beating the All Blacks 38-21 at Twickenham.

For a couple of months afterwards, the reaction of media and supporters alike suggested we were on top of the world and created a huge sense of expectation.

When I attended club matches with Stuart, fans would form a queue to offer their congratulations and it seemed that nothing could turn the feel-good atmosphere sour.

But ultimately it was just one game of rugby, and it did not win us the Grand Slam in the Six Nations at the beginning of the following year. It did, however, earn us the keen attention of the All Blacks coaching group, and they responded with characteristic ruthlessness to the challenge we had thrown down.

One full calendar year on in the autumn of 2013, England once again threatened to topple the world’s number one team, coming back from a nightmarish start (we were 17-3 down by the end of the first quarter) to dominate the middle of the match and take a 22-20 lead into the final 20 minutes.

Although the All Blacks came back to win 30-22, it confirmed England as New Zealand’s major rival at that time. Over the six matches that Lancaster’s England played against New Zealand between 2012 and 2014, the average score was only 27-23 to New Zealand.

Despite a number of close-run things, England lost all of their next five games against the same opponents after that memorable day at Twickenham, and the climax arrived in Hamilton on 21 June 2014.

Most of the England players were running on empty by the third Test at Waikato stadium, with some having played throughout the whole of 2013 (with the Lions tour of Australia that summer) and the first half of 2014 without a break.

Our lineout defence was torn apart in the first half, and we trailed 29-6 at halftime. There was a palpable sense then that the All Blacks were not satisfied. Nowhere near. They not only wanted to beat us, they wanted to humiliate us – to beat us so badly that we would never regain the belief we could challenge them again.

That was the moment that the ferocious inner core of New Zealand rugby life was really felt and understood – and to our eternal credit, we managed to draw the second half seven points apiece and wriggle out of the game with a slightly more respectable 36-13 final scoreline.

It is that ferocity which Ireland experienced in Dublin on Saturday, and which they will continue to experience for as long as they have the temerity to challenge the All Blacks over the coming months and years.

Although the level of ferocity spilled over at times at the Aviva Stadium (but not to the degree suggested by the Irish TV commentators), New Zealand ruthlessness inevitably comes with ‘smarts’. That is a devastating combination, and the All Blacks put right everything that went wrong at a tactical level in Chicago, except for the penalty count.

In the first game, the Kiwi coaching temporarily forgot the importance of fundamentals. They picked one of the great modern blindside flankers at lock and then gave him an inexperienced partner, and this led to a deficiency in aerial skills at lineout and restart, and weak defence of the driving maul from lineout.

How the All Blacks fixed their restarts
Without their regular second row combination of Brodie Retallick and Sam Whitelock in Chicago, the All Blacks went away from their usual policy of kicking short to reclaim the kick-off, and the results weren’t too impressive.

They kicked long towards the Ireland 22 on ten occasions, won no repossessions and gave up one penalty for Waisake Naholo taking out the receiver in the air. When they went back to short restarts in the second half, they struggled with safe hands:

The first two examples are highly atypical of an All Black team, especially the loss of the ball forward by Liam Squire after the kick-off drops straight into his breadbasket.

Where restarts drained New Zealand energy in Chicago, in Dublin they invigorated the men in black and helped them build a steep curve of attacking momentum. The All Blacks won back three of their four kick-offs and scored a three-minute, 13-phase try from the first, which set the mood for the rest of the game.

New Zealand stacked their tight forwards to their left and split Kieran Read to the other side in a small mismatch with Sean O’Brien. Brodie Retallick showed what they had been missing by beating both Donnacha Ryan (24:40) and his replacement Iain Henderson (57:55) to the punch with the ball in the air.

How the All Blacks fixed their defensive lineout
In the first half in Chicago, New Zealand lost three of their first six throws and had a seventh disrupted. On Saturday, order was restored and they won a perfect six out of six.

If anything, their comeback at the defensive lineout was even more important. In Chicago, New Zealand failed to compete on the Ireland throw. Ireland won all of their first eight throws with ease, and every one of their first five lineouts resulted in either penalty (three times) or tries (twice) – a very fruitful attacking platform!

In Dublin, the Irish found life a lot more difficult:

The lopsided 14-4 penalty count meant that Ireland had an avalanche of put-in – no less than 20 throws over the course of the game. New Zealand stole three of those throws and disrupted three others, so although the ‘official’ stats show a 90 per cent win ratio, in reality the percentage was closer to 70 per cent of usable ball.

Whitelock’s early steal at the back (5:45) discouraged Ireland from throwing into that space again until it was too late, when the game had been lost by the 78th minute. With play compressed into the front/middle of the line, Kieran Read’s exceptional ability as a lineout reader and his speed into the air as a counter-jumper came into play with a vengeance.

At 5:43 and 26:18, Read identifies the target area early to turn and lift for Whitelock at the tail; at 54:47 and 67:41 he gets up to challenge 6’10” Devin Toner directly – as the ball is in the air Read’s shoulders are a full foot below Toner’s, but when the ball reaches hands he has the higher elevation of the two.

How the All Blacks fixed their driving maul defence
Five-metre lineout drives, or the threat of them, generated three tries for Ireland in Chicago, so this would have been a major concern for the New Zealand brains trust going into Saturday’s game:

As their first score illustrates, Ireland’s real target area of attack from the maul was the ‘inside corner’ – in other words they were looking for opportunities to shear the drive away towards the corner flag.

In Chicago, #4 Jerome Kaino commits straight on to the receiver (Toner) at 9:32 and is followed inside by #3 Owen Franks. This leaves the inside corner of the maul undefended, with two Irish forwards (#4 Ryan and #1 Jack McGrath) already in that space. Aaron Smith obviously recognises the danger but his increasingly urgent pleas for help go unanswered, with Ireland establishing a winning five-to-one advantage in forward manpower at 9:35 after the shear takes place.

Matters in Dublin were very different. Ireland had three chances to drive the ball over from five metres out, and on each occasion they were firmly rejected.

At 17:32, #4 Retallick is careful to ‘contain’ the inside corner of the drive. He is the player who has control of that edge so that the Chicago shear cannot be repeated. In fact, All Black momentum on Retallick’s side develops so quickly that Sean O’Brien is forced to break out prematurely, ‘change lanes’ and give up the penalty for obstruction.

The second example at 48:27 is virtually a carbon copy of the first. New Zealand build early momentum on that inside corner and Ireland lose control of their maul structure trying to play away to the opposite side.

The final instance, at 51:15, is also the hardest-fought. On this occasion, Retallick really finds himself in a fight for the inside corner with Jack McGrath, but makes sure that he always has control of the edge (51:26). Although they make some progress, Ireland are ultimately forced to stay straight rather than shear off to the side, momentum grinds to a halt and they have to release the ball to the backs – danger over!

Summary
New Zealand effectively put right all the tactical wrongs of Chicago, and they did it with a ferocity that left several Irishmen bruised on the field, and perhaps an even greater number aggrieved off it.

But I know from my own experience that this is the New Zealand way, and there will be no let-up for Ireland in future games between the two countries, or even when some of their players appear in the red of the British and Irish Lions next summer. Far from it.

The claims that Ireland are already the number two team in the world and running the All Blacks closer than any of the Rugby Championship sides may have a grain of truth in it – or it may not, England would surely argue the first statement.

But the win in Chicago has certainly painted a target on Ireland’s back, both for the other teams in the Six Nations and for the All Blacks in future.

Ireland have sowed the wind, now they must endure the whirlwind for some time to come.