Double or Nothing: Can Ireland Repeat Their Kiwi Conquest?

It’s been a historic week in Chicago and the USA overall.

Only days after the Chicago Cubs ended an 108-year wait to once again claim Baseball’s World Series Championship, the city of Chicago witnessed the culmination of an even longer drought – in front of a 62,300 spectators at the Chicago Bears’ Soldier Field on Saturday, Ireland, after 111 years of trying, finally recorded their first ever victory over New Zealand on the rugby pitch.

This was not a win that could simply be put down to the luck of the Irish, or was it? The odds were with the All Blacks

Whether it was the impact of a capacity crowd firmly on Irish’s side or the emotive influence of former international Antony Foley’s recent death – to whom Ireland paid a poignant tribute by forming a figure of eight as a response to the All Blacks’ pre-match Haka – Ireland produced the performance of the year so far to end New Zealand’s record-breaking run of 18 consecutive Tier One test victories.

The importance of the nascent American rugby market has been discussed at length in recent years, but if rugby is to ever lay down tangible roots in an already saturated North American sports market it will be because of games like Saturday’s – emotional, panache and historic.

US sport is expert at promoting events; cities like Chicago, New York, LA and Las Vegas are magnets for sports fans. In the world of rugby, Las Vegas has been prominent with Rugby7s; Ruck and Roll on Rugby Star.

But for all the furore surrounding Ireland’s American exceptionalism, can their Chicagoan heroics be repeated when the teams meet again on the 19th November in Dublin?

The good news for Ireland is that there is little to suggest this was a fluke result. Whilst the context for Saturday’s game was unprecedented, this wasn’t a full-strength Ireland team rolling over the remnants of the New Zealand Maoris team which had beaten the US Eagles the night before. This was a victory over an all-world All Blacks team boasting Ben Smith, Julian Savea, Beauden Barrett, Aaron Smith, Dane Coles, Kieran Read and more.

And this wasn’t a game that Ireland won simply because New Zealand underperformed and handed it to them. Ireland won because their pre-ordained gameplan came to fruition perfectly – they spread the ball wide early to counter the All Blacks’ relentless line speed and scored five tries because of it. They retaliated with their own blitz defence to pressure the Kiwi backline into mistakes. They kicked behind the New Zealand line when necessary and forced their opposition to play from deep rather than attempt to go toe-to-toe with the Kiwis’ ball-playing skills in the middle of the pitch. They exploited their only tactile advantage over the world champions – the physical power of their pack - by opting to play the ball tight when close to the line.

Will all these techniques work again so faultlessly in two weeks’ time? Probably not. The All Blacks are the undisputed top team in international rugby precisely because of their ability to adapt and win in a variety of ways and the return of second-row stalwarts Brodie Retallick and Sam Whitelock will surely shore up a pack noticeably lacking in brawn in Chicago.

But if there is one lesson to take away from Saturday’s game, it’s that Ireland’s coaching staff led by Joe Schmidt and Andy Farrell are capable of devising a system that can overcome the world’s best. And if Connor Murray, Rob Kearney, Simon Zebo, Devin Toner and the plethora of others who outshone their Southern Hemisphere counterparts last weekend can do so again in Dublin, the plinth depicting New Zealand as rugby’s global conquerors could receive a second, and even more significant, fissure.

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