NEW ZEALAND-60 IRELAND-0

A JOLLY GOOD CANING

I'm no mind-reader but after a weekend where it rained on and off in Ireland, patrons of a particular bank were denied their wages for a few days, and the quarter-finals of the Euros were taking place with the noticeable absence of Trapattoni's men, I'd wager the last thing Irish rugby fans need on a Monday morning is a blow-by-blow account of The Hamilton Horror Show.

When it comes to re-living the action itself, let me just give these two examples which pretty much sums it all up....when the ball hits Rob Kearney's arm and goes forward, it falls to the ground and he gets sent to the bin. When the same thing happens to the next flanker off the All Black assembly line Sam Cane, it falls into his grateful arms and hey, guess what, he's already over the try line so all he has to do is fall over for yet another five points.

There's no sugar-coating it, folks, this was a demolition. We poked the bear the previous week and the World Champions responded in not-so-kind. There may be mitigating circumstances; the fact that this was one test too many for a squad of players that had been going at it for almost an entire calendar year being utmost among them, but any defence you'd try to make for the lads would be as weak as the one that shipped sixty points, so this blogger certainly won't be harping on in that vein today.

All that we really can do is see where Irish rugby stands as the 2011/12 campaign finally draws to a close.

Of course just below test level, everything is rosy for now, and we have known that for a few weeks now. Even those pesky Ospreys pinching the Pro12 title at the RDS couldn't dampen a season that had something significant for all four Irish provinces.

But for the national team, things are anything but rosy. And forget about comparing us to the southern hemisphere, the season gets put in perspective when you look at the fortunes of the other Six Nations members for the past twelve months.

Of course Wales have set the standard this season having won the Grand Slam and gotten within a point of a World Cup final once and breaking their Aussie hoodoo twice. England picked themselves up and dusted themselves off after all the ferry-jumping and dwarf-throwing; with a new coaching ticket they won four out of five in the Six Nations and were the only ones to nick a result from their 3-test series with the SANZAR nations.

The Italians will always have their wooden-spoon avoidance to cling to and even the team that ended up with it Scotland can find comfort in victory over the Wallabies and an unbeaten June. If any of our northern hemisphere “top tier” bed-fellows can feel down it's the French, but even they came within a point of the World Championship and rounded off their tour with a thumping of Argentina.

As for Ireland, we played 17 matches this season and put in only 3 top-notch performances. To make matters worse, of those three, against Australia, France and New Zealand, not only were none of them at home, only one ended in actual victory.

That makes for grim reading whatever way you look at it, folks.

I actually missed watching the Third Test live as I had a day-long class in a course I'm taking, and when we broke for lunch and I checked my phone, one stat surprised me more than the scoreline, and that was the amount of comments on my Facebook page in response to the match.

Normally on a good day the discussion thread will go to about 30 or so comments...this one was already well over 80, and the theme, not surprisingly, was Declan Kidney's tenure as Irish coach. Here's my chance to chuck in my few thoughts...

Can we heap the blame on him for this season? I believe so – I mean, where else should the buck stop? Besides, I have spent the last ten months analysing individual players...it's time for the men up in the booth to fall under the spotlight.

And remember...twelve months ago I was the very one trying to hold up a defence for him as the pressure was already mounting. Wait until we play the Wallabies at RWC2011, I said. Since the Grand Slam hoodoo was broken, this was all that really matters, I said.

But then something happened. On July 22, 2011, Kidney gets handed a new contract. After all the consternation over what happened after Eddie O'Sullivan four years earlier, the IRFU unbelievably go down the exact same road.

Yet I still stuck to my guns. This may make little sense to me, but hey...we must still let him be judged by how he does in Pool C, I said.

And sure enough, albeit with the help of a significant injury or two on their part, the Wallabies succumb to our choke tackles in Eden Park, and everything looks hunky dory once more. Vindication for everyone all round, right?

Pity Warren Gatland had other ideas. He and his Polish-training-camp-hardened squad waited in the long grass and did us over in the quarterfinals, and we played like a team that had put all its eggs into the Wallaby basket and ended up fried, scrambled and poached all at once by the Welsh in Wellington.

But hang on, we got a second crack at them to start the Six Nations...plus it was perfect chance to start our countdown to the 2015 World Cup by trying some new players, so we had every opportunity to redeem ourselves, I said.

The moment I heard Kidney read out the opening lineup for that match I stopped saying such things.

Barring injuries, it was the exact same XV from Wellington. And say what you like about tip-tackles, the lasting memory from that match will be the way the Welsh were allowed to march back down the field with nary a glove laid on them.

If we must heap blame on the coaching staff, I say let it be for our glaring lack of preparation for those two contests with our Celtic cousins, not last Saturday's result.

Does this mean Kidney should go now? Well, gun to my head, I'd say yes. But will he? No gun required, the answer is no. Yet by persevering with him in the role, I believe the IRFU have created a bit of a dilemma for themselves.

We all know that the biggest criticism of Declan Kidney has been his conservative selection policy. After a disastrous season he now has but two full matches, against the Springboks and Pumas, before the next Six Nations, so even if he does decide to dip into the plentiful well that is our impressive Under 20s squad, he has precious little time to introduce them into the full team.

And on the subject of the “Wolfpuppies”...I find it interesting that when it comes to the failures of the national set-up blame is being placed at the coach's door while all the plaudits surrounding the team that deserved a much higher finish than 5^th in South Africa seem to be centred around the players?

Sure, in JJ Hanrahan, Iain Henderson & co we have a promising crop of youngsters, but what about the other Grand Slam winning coach in the IRFU's employ that has been at the helm for the past couple of years?

It's like Kidney's tenure as Irish national coach has been haunted at every turn by successful coaches of Wales...and while in Gatland's case he held the Irish reins in the past, I'm wondering if Mike Ruddock is a name for our future? He surely deserves mention every bit as much as the likes of Joe Schmidt and Conor O'Shea, and given the “mother ship” history of head coach appointments, he must certainly be a candidate.

But that's all ahead of us. I'll be very surprised if any changes are made to the Irish coaching ticket before next spring, and unless Declan Kidney experiences a "Pauline conversion" in his approach to the game before then, for the time being I'd much rather focus on Euro2012, Wimbledon or even the Olympics than wonder how our national side will fare.

And it doesn't help to know that over the past few weeks the All Blacks have successfully introduced the likes of Aaron Smith and Sam Cane to the top table either.

So here I bring my season of writeups to a close. If you've read down this far, chances are you're been following my contributions throughout the campaign, and I thank you for that. Sorry for the doom and gloom this week surrounding next season...but if it's any consolation I expect much more from the provinces!

I'll be taking an extended break from the writing myself, but the new blog HarpinOnRugby2 is up and running with contributions from all corners of the ruggersphere so by all means stay tuned and sure I'm never far away from the Twitter or Facebook either so I'm bound to have a thing or two to say there as well.

In the meantime, have a great summer folks (such as it is here in Ireland!) and I'll see you again in September! JLP

Also this weekend

France Under-20s 7 - 18 Ireland Under-20s

Samoa 16 - 17 Scotland

Australia 20 - 19 Wales

South Africa 14 - 14 England

Argentina 10 - 49 France

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WHEELING IN THE TEARS

“You have to say, Justin, there's only one team on the field that looks like scoring!”

“That's absolutely right...they have the momentum at the moment, and all the attitude to go with it!”

If you want unbiased TV coverage when the All Blacks are playing, you need to be sure to follow the New Zealand commentary. The gushing of respect from the UK version of Sky Sports towards the World Champions generally begins during the haka and never lets up.

As you can see by the above exchange between SkyNZ's Grant Nisbett and Justin Marshall, the Kiwis knew they'd been in a game when this one was over.

Sadly for Ireland, shortly after they said those words, at a time when they really needed the momentum they were enjoying to be reflected in the refereeing, Nigel Owens and Romain Poite combined to deny them by seeming to go out of their way to let the All Blacks off the hook.

Look...we can argue the toss about the “wheeling the scrum” call or indeed the knock on that went before it till the cows come home...in my book there may be a case for them to be given, but particularly in the scrum situation, I really don't see how any common sense was used in making the call. Why the hell would Ireland intentionally wheel at that point? They had superiority in the scrum, they had an extra man...let's face it, the All Blacks were there for the taking.

Best way to put it without getting upset is that the call was wrong, if not in technicality then definitely in spirit, and although this will always go down as the “one that got away” in Ireland's quest for a maiden victory over the men in black, they certainly need not look at their own performance for the reasons as they did last week.

And on the subject of having the extra man for the closing ten minutes, there's no doubt Owens got Dagg's yellow correct, and it was no more than the All Blacks deserved after McCaw's knee in D'Arcy's back (which ended his tour), Aaron Smith's arm around O'Driscoll's neck and Ali Williams kicking Eoin Reddan as he went for the quick outlet pass were all considered good enough for them to stay on the park.

I mean it's not as though we did everything perfectly ourselves; early scrums and lineouts were going wrong on our feed, some senseless penalties were being given away, we couldn’t seem to retrieve their restarts and one of our own didn’t go the full ten.

But although many questioned the wisdom of playing multiple tests against such quality opposition, one benefit it does give is a chance to regroup and iron out the kinks from the previous week, and this the Irish definitely did, particularly when the home side had the ball, and it's just as well, since they had it for 60% of the contest.

And it wasn't just the scrum call that went against us...throughout the match we saw several examples of the laws of the game being correctly applied whilst appearing unfair. First Dan Tuohy makes a good tackle and rolls away just as he should – sadly he rolls into an area that is construed as “sealing off” and Dan Carter gets as easy a 3 points as he'll ever get.

Then we perfectly employ our forté choke tackle, only to find the ensuing scrum go against us as the maul was formed following a kick.

Last and certainly not least, there was the ridiculous ruling that the All Blacks who chased down Carte's first attempt at a winning drop goal weren't offside because the “ball was touched in flight”. Again, absolutely the correct call as it did graze Sean O'Brien's farmer's paw on the way by, but for him to be effectively penalised for doing what any coach in the game would have him do is of course utterly absurd.

But hey...I know Roy Keane has a point when he poo-poos the Irish mentality of claiming “moral victories” despite losing on the scoreboard, but what we saw in Christchurch was a far cry from a half-hour's sing-song while witnessing humiliation on the pitch. The positives all over the park were there to be seen and deserve their adulation.

And the SkyNZ commentary duo wouldn't be the only Kiwis who would tell you how dominant Ireland were.

Ask Dan Carter, who despite having a backline behind him more than proven at Test level to cause serious damage, had to resort to desperate drop goal attempts to get his side ahead as though he were playing for an underdog on foreign soil.

Ask Richie McCaw and Adam Thompson – a pair of flankers more battered and bruised after a match at this level I doubt I've ever seen.

And you must certainly ask Sonny Bill Williams, who turned over the ball a half-a-dozen times and probably won't ever see as frightening a sight in a boxing ring than that of Cian Healy's scowling mug at the end of a straight arm that's grabbing his jersey beneath the throat.

The tackling heroes were all throughout the team...O'Brien and 50^-cap hero Jamie Heaslip were leading the way much as they did last week, the half-backs and centres were all but unpassable, but special mention I feel must go to our locks Dan Tuohy and Donnacha Ryan...didn't get a lot of mention by commentators of either nationality but at 14 tackles each and perfect lineout catches you could hardly ask much more from a pair that had just 22 caps between them at kickoff.

Now...we come to a sticky part of the writeup for this particular blogger. Last week I stuck it to Declan Kidney and Conor Murray, observations that many would say were made through blue-tinted glasses, as much as I'd try to claim they were as green as I could get them.

So given this 80-minute display and the fact that our lone try was scored by the young Munster scrum-half, does this mean I must now be gorging myself on humble pie? Sorry, but no.

I will praise this one performance as much as the next Irish fan, and on twitter I did so shortly after full-time. As far as 80 minutes of test rugby goes, this was up there with the greatest ever by the men in green.

But when you look over Kidney's tenure, yes, you see a Grand Slam at his first attempt, but following that you see a series of Autumn Internationals, Six Nations and a World Cup that are all characterized by one outstanding display...defeat of the Boks in 2009, demolishing Wales in 2010, England in early 2011 and Australia late, and the spirited draw in Paris this season. Each of them memorable outings that were erased not too long afterwards by mediocrity.

So as much as I hate to say it, for this narrow defeat to count for anything, they need to match it afterwards, and as we all know, that won't be easy given the squad's ever-increasing injury count plus the fact that the long-winding road that has been the 2011/12 campaign will be coming to an end for all involved.

Considering those mitigating factors, I may forgive them if the intensity levels aren't quite as high next Saturday, but as far as I'm concerned they will need to crank it up again in November when the Boks come a-knockin once more.

Then there's Conor Murray. This time he played a lot more of his natural game...rather than taking an age to fire off his pass every time, he still took an age but this time he often took it himself, mostly for a decent gain and of course one for our only try.

It's just that I'm still left wondering if we could have crossed their line more often with a more positive approach?

Yes, our tackling and our kick-chasing were superb, but I still won't be happy until I see Reddan or even Paul Marshall given the starting nod with Sexton for a few matches in a row to see if we can actually lay a knockout blow when we have our opponent on the ropes rather than trying to win on points.

We must not of course forget the significance of this occasion...Christchurch is a city with a fine rugby tradition and it was great to see it welcome the Test version of the game back after the tragedy of last year.

But purely from a rugby point of view, I doubt Steve Hansen will face anything near as stern a test on home soil when the inaugural Investec Rugby Championship kicks off in August. I'm also wondering...would Ireland’s starting with 9-10-12 combination the same as it finished in Christchurch give him something new to think about in Hamilton? Wouldn't be a provincial half-back pairing, so surely Declan would consider it? JLP

Also this weekend

Argentina 23 - 20 France
South Africa 36 - 27 England
Australia 25 - 23 Wales
Fiji 25 - 37 Scotland

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SAVEA BUT YET SO FAR

OK, perhaps I was a tad brave/stupid/nuts to forecast that Ireland would win this one, but hey – what's the point in togging out if you have absolutely no belief you can win?

And as it turned out, we came up against an All Black unit that was literally firing on all cylinders...from the pre-match PR (where they'd have us believe they all came together for the first time this international season about five minutes before kickoff) to Dan Carter's effortless placekicking to their clinical offloading and most of all, to their assembly line of promising rookies like Aaron Smith and of course hat-trick débutante Julian Savea.

But they are the number one ranked team in the world and also the current four-year guardians of “Bill”. So all of the above is pretty much what you'd expect from them before kickoff, which means when analysing this game from an Irish viewpoint it's important to focus on what we did (or didn't do depending on how you look at it) to try and front up to them.

When Leinster lifted their third Heineken Cup in four years, around the social media sphere the common line by those scrambling to find a means to take the wind out of the sails of their fans was “well it's great that they play like that for Leinster – why can't they do that for Ireland?” At Eden Park on Saturday we saw why.

The principles which have brought Leinster so much success have been twofold – a smart, stubborn defence and a high-octane offence which Jonathan Sexton is allowed to dictate mostly thanks to hard work at the breakdown and quick ball from his scrum-half. I'll get to the defence later.

At this stage, I really don't care how one-eyed I sound, because this is a point I have made over and over. Declan Kidney took much praise from pundits and keyboard warriors alike with his selections for this test but still he persisted with a halfback pairing from different provinces. So in between Sean O'Brien and Jamie Heaslip leading the team in tackles and Sexton trying to get the most out of Keith Earls at 12 running from deep, we had Conor Murray, who I'm sorry to say is Tomás O'Leary 2.0.

That's not to say Murray is bad or that he doesn't have a part to play in the Ireland setup, it's just his game isn't suited to the style that Sexton brings to the table. It's almost as though Kidney's reasoning is “I don't pick provincial half-back partners because that's exactly what the opposition will be expecting”. If so, I'd argue that the opposition are expecting it because they fear it having seen it work so well!

So time after time we saw Murray being undecided as he took the ball from the base of rucks and mauls. I could also criticise him for the two midfield scrums he wasted by getting pinged for delaying the put-in. Perhaps Nigel Owens was a bit harsh with the first one, but having established that precedent, to be caught for it again was simply inexcusable.

Besides...although Declan Fitzpatrick himself had a good début and while he was on, the front row was the very least of our problems, Murray didn't know that on the first put-in so you'd think he'd be falling over himself to get the ball in quickly!

And the O'Leary comparison extends further when you look at the All Blacks' opening try. We can argue from dusk till dawn as to whether Zac Guildford knocked on when he spilled Murray's box kick but the fact remains it was kicked way too far and once it was deemed to have been lateral there's no team on the planet better suited to attacking from deep and with the bulk of the Irish team clued in to following the box kick up the touchline, there was easily enough light shining through our defence for Savea to be put in for his maiden test 5-pointer.

Finally, to bring on Reddan & O'Gara together for the final quarter is like rubbing our noses in it! Remember...I'm not suggesting we would have won had Reddan started, nor am I saying ROG shouldn't have come on. It's the blinkered determination to mix the pairings that continuously gets my goat.

Now, on the subject of our defence...we really do need to be smarter with that choke tackle. It can be as much of a blessing as it is a curse. The All Blacks made TWENTY clean breaks during this match, and a good few of them came from the front line tacklers taking the high-risk option of standing off and going for the chest area with their first hit.

When you compare this to the Under-20s who are doing so well down in South Africa by diving at the attacker's ankles you have to wonder is there any kind of uniformity among the Irish coaching setup at all. Also you have the Leinster defence which is a lot more straight-forward - first man gets him down, second tries to rip, with the choke-tackle kept in the back pocket as an option only used at the right time.

We basically played into the All Blacks hands by playing as we did in the closing minutes against Wales in February, and although the two wingers were caught out of position more than once for tries, it would be harsh to heap all the blame on them and I feel it's our overall philosophy without the ball that needs looking at.

And it's not as though we never showed glimpses of what we could do. The All Blacks may be a rugby machine, but even they offer up some chances and you have to be able to capitalise when they do – this is precisely how we got our one and only try, thanks to Rory Best's quick reactions, Peter O'Mahony's impressive outhalf-like vision & execution, and Fergus McFadden's ability to make Richie McCaw run like he's an ageing local Sunday morning league prop.

But we can't prepare for a series of tests against a team of this quality hoping for a series of events like that to cross the line, or indeed relying on our centres to brilliantly combine in thwarting what seemed a certain try by Kieran Read from the resulting restart. I know we were missing some marquee names, I know our injury list is getting longer, and I know the players we're sending out there are coming to the end of yet another monster campaign.

I just want to see in the performance that plans have been put in place to maximise our potential, or at very least blood some new players for the next World Cup down the line. All I seem to make out is the same playbook that was designed  to overcome Australia in that very same Eden Park last September being kept on a constant loop and I really think the other test nations are bang wide to it by now.

The hashtag #Kidneyout was trending on Twitter as this match was going on. It's a shame in many ways because I believe he has done much since assuming the role. But I really don't see the benefit of him leading us into the 2013 Six Nations campaign, even if he does show us something different between now and then.

You can safely say I won't be sticking my neck out predicting Irish victories over the next two tests! Maybe these defeats won't affect our rankings enough to knock us out of the second pot in the RWC2015 pool draw, but they are doing plenty to leave a sour taste in the mouths of fans trying to savour what has overall been a celebratory season for Irish rugby.  JLP

Also this weekend

Saturday, 9 June 2012

Australia 27 - 19 Wales

South Africa 22 - 17 England

Argentina 37 - 22 Italy

Top 14 final

Toulouse 18 - 12 Toulon