Ireland determined to defeat All Blacks on home soil

Joe Schmidt’s squad are determined to relegate the 40-29 win over the All Blacks in Chicago to a footnote in the rugby narrative of the November Test series for the time being, aware of the need to face forward rather than look back ahead of the Saturday’s reprise at the Aviva Stadium.

For 111 years successive Ireland teams resembled Sisyphus, pushing that boulder up the mountain, only to watch it roll back and trudging back down to the foothills to start again.

The satisfaction of a first ever win at Test level has been subsumed by a desire to back up, not just the performance, but also the result.

Sean Cronin knows that the win in America will lose a tiny bit of lustre, not much but enough, if Ireland are well beaten in their backyard. "If you want to be respected on the world stage you've got to bring that consistency of performance. There's no point in having that result, a flash in the pan.

“It’s great, it’s fantastic to get that win off the back after the 111 years, but we’re a team looking to be respected by other nations in terms of our consistency and our level of performance, so it’s a big driving factor for us.

“They’re going to be massively up for the game and might have a few key players coming back, who are world class. That’s going to add even more quality to their team. It’s all about this week. There’s no looking back to Chicago.”

Experienced cadre

Cronin spoke about the experienced cadre within the squad driving everyone, focusing on standards and ensuring that there is no diminution in appetite or application.

New Zealand will improve, the likelihood, appreciably so. There will be a better balance to the team; the handling, discipline and set piece, areas that dipped well below their ridiculously high standards, will improve exponentially. So too must Ireland's performance.

Cronin explained: “Well, it’s just about delivering every Test match in all the key areas, getting the physicality right, the detail right; defence, attack, set piece, all the areas you’ve got to bring together to have the quality of performance to match teams like New Zealand.”

Schmidt has retained 37 players for training purposes and none are content to take a back seat. Training is spicy. Cronin continued: “Yeah, there’s a good bite there. It’s great to see players of the calibre of Sean [O’Brien] and Pete [O’Mahony] coming back.

Chicago game

“Guys need to perform in training and they need to be up to speed with everything. Joe and the rest of the staff have some headaches to deal with this week and it’s great to have players like that coming back into the mix.”

Ireland have been focusing on the shortcomings from the Chicago game, including the manner in which they defended as the All Blacks devoured their sizeable half-time lead before Robbie Henshaw’s late try. “Andy [Farrell, defence coach] got into us a bit over how soft the tries that we conceded were.

“That’s a big key area that we can look to up a few per cent in the game at the weekend. We are not going to be able to give away soft scores like that. That’s a big area for us on D [defence], especially when they get into our 22. Other areas of the game were right up there, which maybe kept us ticking over nicely.

“Their discipline on the day [in Chicago], I don’t think will be as bad this weekend. They gave away a lot of penalties that let us into the game.

"They're going to have a lot of changes, got world-class players of the calibre of Brodie Retallick and Sam Whitelock to come back into the secondrow, possibly moving Jerome Kaino back to the backrow where he's been fantastic for years.

“It’s a different team coming to the Aviva so that’s an area the coaches will have to look at for the selection they make too. It’s got to be a different mentality, depending on their selection.”