Can Ireland beat the All Blacks just the twice in November?

 

 Sean O'Brien

So the big question of the weekend has to be, can Ireland beat the All Blacks, just the twice in November? The short answer is probably no, but here’s the long answer anyway. We had a unique opportunity in Chicago – they were on an 18 win streak, lulled into a false sense of security by playing weaker teams like Australia, South Africa and Argentina. And the fact we’ve never beaten them…surely meant they wouldn’t be beaten this time either. They also came into to match quite light at lock and centre, and well, the rest is history.

This week we get to face the full fat, full strength All Blacks, and it’s safe to say that Retallick and Whitelock will make a considerable difference. It’s hard to know how whether they see us a real threat, and play a bit more cautiously, or whether they’ll respond by coming out all guns blazing. Either way, no one is under any illusion about the challenge facing Ireland.

On our side is probably the best coach in the world, and he’s not planning to lose this weekend I can tell you. Home advantage is huge, there is going to be an almighty racket at the Aviva every time we play well. In terms of our team, I would have preferred not to see Sean O’Brien back yet, I don’t think he’s up to speed yet, and Josh VDF did so well last week. But I was wrong about Kearney too.

Who’s going win then? It’ll be like last time, they’ll lay down the challenge, we’ll accept it and take it from there, and the best team on the day will win. It should be the All Blacks, but you just never know.

Scotland v Argentina, and France v Australia should be great too.

International Matches
Italy 14:00 South Africa
Wales 14:30 Japan
England 14:30 Fiji
Scotland 17:00 Argentina
Ireland 17:30 New Zealand
France 20:00 Australia