FEATURE Revenge on the mind: Win or lose in Paris, All Blacks have Ireland to thank

The storyline couldn’t have worked out better for the All Blacks at this World Cup. Everyone seems convinced they have landed where they didn’t want to be – in a quarter-final against Ireland – but everyone who thinks this is wrong.

Ireland, world number and on a 17-game unbeaten run that includes World Cup victories against South Africa and Scotland, have beaten the All Blacks three of the last four times they have played.

They are impressively coached, rigidly disciplined, fantastically accurate and supremely confident, yet Ireland are precisely who New Zealand coach Ian Foster wanted to meet in the quarter-final of this World Cup.

And there are two reasons why. The first is more symbolic, but it is powerful and relevant, nevertheless.

Ireland did the All Blacks an inadvertent favour last year when they won the three-Test July series in New Zealand. And because Ireland forced the All Blacks to make dramatic changes in personnel and strategy, and to lift their standards in all facets of their game, they latter are delighted now to have the chance to see how much they have developed in the last 15 months.

It was a pivotal moment for the All Blacks – a loss that led to them doing all sorts of soul-searching and reconfiguring as it highlighted a number of areas where the world’s best-known rugby team were falling behind.

Ireland, effectively, sent New Zealand into panic mode and forced massive changes. After that series defeat last July, All Blacks assistant coaches John Plumtree and Brad Mooar were sacked.

And they were sacked because after Ireland played such controlled, simple and effective rugby, it became undeniable that New Zealand were on the wrong track.

In a World Cup cycle that has been unusually volatile for the All Blacks – filled with more lows than usual certainly – the series loss to Ireland was the nadir.

They didn’t have the same physical edge or set-piece power. They didn’t have the same mobile, bruising athletes who could smash opponents and play a bit of rugby.

In a World Cup cycle that has been unusually volatile for the All Blacks – filled with more lows than usual certainly – the series loss to Ireland was the nadir.

Ireland’s 2-1 victory was the most formative three weeks of the last four years, a point that Foster readily conceded after his team had qualified for the quarter-finals.

“Very much, so I reckon,” said Foster. “I don’t think we got surprised in that series from what we were dealt but we realised that there were a couple of areas where our benchmark wasn’t high enough.

“We realised that we had to make a bit of a step shift in a couple of areas to get what we needed to.

“You can’t give top teams a couple of lineout drive tries against you for example and expect to come out and beat them consistently. We had to work hard in a couple of areas – we still are – that obviously being one.”

The other major lesson from that series, was the importance of technical precision and accuracy in the collision areas.

The All Blacks lost the plot with their discipline last July – picking up two yellow cards and a red in the first half of the second test and they were lucky that a refereeing oversight prevented them from being reduced to 12 men for a 10-minute spell.

“We also learned in that series, quite frankly, you want 15 players on the park,” said Foster. “The second Test was a shambles with cards and in the third test there was a card that we came right back into that game when they went down to 14 men, and they should have stayed at 14 men for the rest of the game.

The team that will likely start the quarter-final will look nothing like the team that started the last time the All Blacks played Ireland.

“We have learned the importance of that. It was an upper cut we got, but to be fair we have had those upper cuts before, but sometimes you get an upper cut, but you come out of the winning side of it.”

Since that series against Ireland, the All Blacks have reinvented themselves tactically. They have become a much tougher, physical team with a vastly improved scrum, while their breakdown work is also more accurate and ruthless.

Now they build everything through the forwards first: using their scrum to win penalties, their lineout to pressure teams and their breakdown to win turnover ball and create counterattack chances.

Everything they do has a muscularity to it and that’s why the team that will likely start the quarter-final will look nothing like the team that started the last time the All Blacks played Ireland.

That defeat effectively ended, or put on hold, the Test careers of Akira Ioane, Hoskins Sotutu, Angus Ta’avao, Pita Gus Sowakula, Roger Tuivasa-Scheck and Aiden Ross.

In their place have come the likes of Ethan de Groot, Tyrel Lomax, Fletcher Newell, Shannon Frizell and Mark Telea, while Jordie Barrett has been reinvented as a midfielder and Richie Mo’unga has been established as the premier No 10.

The All Blacks have also found livewire halfback Cam Roigard since last year, got Damian McKenzie back from Japan and rejuvenated Anton Lienert-Brown.

Ireland will be looking at an entirely different team and whatever they learned about the All Blacks last year, may be rendered moot in the quarter-final such is the scale of change in the last 15 months.

And what else will be different is the intensity of the All Blacks’ motivation. They were mentally drifting a year ago.

There’s a lot of us who are pretty keen to get one up on them and still hurting from what happened last year.

Beauden Barrett

They didn’t know who they were or how they wanted to play. The players didn’t have the confidence in the game plan or coaching staff that they now do, and the All Blacks have shown by scoring 240 points in their last three pool games that they are ruthless on attack.

They are also burning with desire to be let loose against Ireland because many of the players see it as an opportunity for revenge.

“We learned a lot during that series,” says All Blacks fullback Beauden Barrett. “It was a challenging time, some of the most challenging times we’ve faced as an All Black team and personally, losing a series in our backyard.

“But what we know is the beast that Ireland are and if you allow them to dictate up front and play they want they want to, they are a tough team to stop.

“So it’s going to be great because there’s a lot of us who are pretty keen to get one up on them and still hurting from what happened last year.”

These are the kind of situations that the All Blacks love: shown up by a great Ireland team last year, they went away, made big changes and have come back stronger, better and hungrier to succeed.

This is why their legacy is what it is – they never take defeat well and they would love nothing more than to show how much they have improved against the very team that forced them to rebuild everything in the first place.

And so too would it be all the sweeter to do it at a World Cup. It used to be an All Blacks failing to dominate the World Cup cycle and then lose at the tournament itself to one of the teams they had smacked around three or four times in the years before.

The irony of being able to turn the tables on Ireland would be delicious. “They’ve been the best team in the world,” said hooker Dane Coles.

“There’s a few scars with us losing to them you can’t get away from that fact. It would be a really good opportunity to play them. I know everyone in this team, we’re looking forward to it.”