![]() There was a handful of respectable scorelines in the years that followed until the Hamilton Chainsaw Massacre of 2012, when replacement Paddy Wallace became living proof that having your phone on when sunning yourself on holidays was not always a great plan. We will always remember waiting for quotes in the corridor outside the changing room as Keith Wood, in colourful language, explained to his teammates the average Kiwi’s thought process: beat the All Blacks and you get respect lose and you don’t. They were beaten out the gate for T2 in Auckland a week later, with Keith Gleeson the victim of having had a fine game the previous weekend. Many men in green would struggle to count on the fingers of both hands over the years. If you didn’t climb through it then you got caught painfully when it closed. The circadian rhythm of touring laid down that the window was open only for the First Test. ![]() Once a tour has motored on past the First Test however you didn’t consider venturing down that street, or any other in the same neighbourhood. Our favourite has always been the drop goal with the clock in overtime and a two-point deficit facing the away team. When a losing run gets up a head of steam - in this case stretching back to 1976 when Ireland came second in their first Test in NZ, again in Wellington - you fantasise about how it will end. There was just the small matter of faxing reports back home. He looked and sounded like most of all he wanted to get on the plane. And that was only if they had the appetite for movement at all. “In general terms I think it leaves Irish rugby further down the road than before we came out, certainly,” he said.Ĭiaran Fizgerald had a crystal clear view of the snail’s pace at which the IRFU moved. On the earlier trip there with the 1983 Lions, where he had been vilified as a captain who struggled to hit his lineout targets, Fitzgerald was asked where next for the tourists, after another dispiriting defeat.īut standing outside the Ireland dressing-room after that Second Test - New Zealand had won 59-6 - Fitzgerald looked like he had come off savage weekend manoeuvres on the Curragh where the ammo had been live and the rations meagre. The Ireland coach Ciaran Fitzgerald was an army man who knew a thing or two about dealing with adversity. To balance that, the changing rooms were in the bowels of the main stand with very little light and wooden floors that could have been salvaged from a coffin ship. ![]() It was in the old Athletic Park, a comfort-free, creaking stadium featuring the Millard Stand, where you needed nerves of steel and an oxygen tank to confront its altitude and incline. It was the first graphic illustration of the modern era where Ireland were much worse than threadbare: we had no backside in our trousers and New Zealand were consummate in the business of reddening cheeks. It’s fitting Ireland’s tour of New Zealand should wrap up in Wellington next weekend, for that’s where the lesson ended 30 years ago.
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