'Sorry Ireland, we didn't need to get motivated playing you': All Blacks great

It must be hard to imagine for All Blacks that were playing only ten years ago that a rivalry with Ireland would not only soon emerge, but be one of the biggest in the game.

Given that Ireland had to wait 111 years to taste victory over the All Blacks, it is understandable why any player who pulled on the black jersey prior to that historic day in Chicago in 2016 would have been slightly dismissive of the men in green.

Now with five wins in their last nine meetings, that has all changed, but former All Blacks Zinzan Brooke and Justin Marshall recently gave an insight into the All Blacks’ “type of arrogance” when facing sides that had never beaten them.

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On The Good, the Bad & the Rugby podcast, the pair discussed how the “dynamic’s changed” between Ireland and New Zealand, and how Friday’s hosts at the Aviva Stadium no longer fear the three-time world champions.

From Peter O’Mahony’s comments to Sam Cane to Reiko Ioane’s message to Johnny Sexton last year, this is now a Test with a lot of “spice”, to which Brooke believes “if you’re going to give it out, you’ve got to take it as well.”

Fixture

Internationals

Ireland

13 - 23

Full-time

New Zealand

All Stats and Data

While this is now one of the biggest games in the rugby calendar, that was not always the case, as the former All Blacks No 8 explains.

“Sorry to say, Ireland, but we didn’t need to get motivated back in the day playing you guys,” Brooke said.

“You couldn’t. You didn’t. You turned up, kicked their arse and do the job.

“We just knew if we just deliver and we just function and we just do the basics, you’ll p**s this.”

Marshall added: “A massive advantage that we had when we played was that they had never beaten us. So history was hanging over them as well. That’s quite heavy baggage to have knowing that for over 100 years you’d been trying. We know that you’ve got all the pressure because you don’t know how to get the job done, whereas we do because we’ve been doing it for over 100 years.

“So that was why we had that type of arrogance because Scotland’s never beaten us, Ireland had never beaten us, when we were playing Argentina had never beaten us, Wales hadn’t beaten us and still haven’t in sixty-odd years. All of a sudden, we’ve got that mentality. Whereas this current side, with Ireland beating them for the first time in Chicago, that’s not a burden for them any more. So the dynamic’s changed from when we were playing, because we had that edge.”