View from New Zealand: All Blacks face one of their toughest tests in Dublin

Only the All Blacks could be sitting on 12 wins from 13 Tests in 2021 and fretting that their season will have the taint of failure clinging to it should they lose in Dublin.

The All Blacks are held to different expectations to the rest of the rugby world, but to even consider branding a season in which they have spent the last 12 weeks away from home in a bio-bubble almost disastrous because of just two defeats in 14 Tests, seems out-of-whack even for the mostly out-of-whack Kiwi rugby fraternity.

But there are a few reasons why this Test is season-defining for the All Blacks and one that will significantly shape the context in which it ends up being viewed.

Their season has indeed been inordinately long and challenged as Covid restrictions forced them to play the Rugby Championship in Australia.

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The All Blacks can do shock-and-awe rugby in a way no one else can, something Ireland are unlikely to forget having been blitzed off the park the last time they met

But it has also been relatively soft in that they have played Tonga and USA, a three-quarter strength Fiji (twice), Italy, a Welsh team denied many of their best players, two Tests against an average Pumas outfit and three against the Wallabies who remain impossible to gauge given they were good enough to twice beat the Springboks, yet also lose to Scotland.

The prevailing view in New Zealand is that the All Blacks' two Rugby Championship games against South Africa are the only genuine, soul-searching examinations they have sat this year and they won the first encounter, lost the second but their old failings were exposed in both.

As Johnny Sexton said this week, the All Blacks, if they are allowed, play at a frightening speed, their pass and catch being slick enough to facilitate all sorts of creative ploys and their natural instincts so sharp as to exploit anything masquerading as even a quarter chance.

The All Blacks can do shock-and-awe rugby in a way no one else can, something Ireland are unlikely to forget having been blitzed off the park the last time these two met at the 2019 Rugby World Cup.

In the two years since that quarter-final blow-out, the All Blacks have, almost unbelievably, found another gear and the speed at which they can play makes their 2019 selves look decidedly pedestrian.

The arrival of Covid shut international borders and forced New Zealand to scramble their own Super Rugby competition.

Cut off from the rest of the world, the rugby evolved in an almost Darwinian fight for survival and five teams with a natural tendency to play fast, pass and catch, ruck and run rugby took their skill-levels to new heights.

But while relative isolation honed the All Blacks attacking instincts and has made them almost unbeatable if the game loses structure, it has also seen them stagnate or possibly even regress in the traditional art of attrition-based Test warfare.

Just as Ireland know the All Blacks can be deadly in an open contest, so too have they seen for themselves that New Zealand are vulnerable when confronted with low-risk rugby built on aggressive defence, astute kicking and punchy, close-quarter ball carrying.

This weakness was first exposed by the Lions in 2017 and then again by South Africa and Ireland in 2018 and England at the Rugby World Cup in 2019.

When head coach Ian Foster took over the side in early 2020, he made it his priority to equip the All Blacks with a greater physical edge to avoid being suffocated by more muscular, conservative teams.

The arrival of Covid, however, reduced the All Blacks to just six Tests last year - against Australia and Argentina - and saw their Tests against Northern Hemisphere opposition this July cancelled, which means Foster has had little opportunity to stress test his side's ability to cope when put under serious defensive pressure.

Having mostly played either weak or similarly attack-minded teams, the All Blacks have played mostly sweeping, expansive rugby that has been creative and clever and has enabled them to set a world record for tries in a calendar year in 2021.

They have discovered the quite brilliant Will Jordan and have rejuvenated Beauden Barrett, Jordie Barrett and Rieko Ioane and throughout 2021 they have produced patches of stunning rugby.

What remains unclear is how far they have advanced their ability to be so ruthless and sweeping when confronted by bruising defensive sides that take few risks.

Against South Africa their lineout was pulled apart in both Tests, they were counter rucked too easily and the speed of the Boks defence saw the backline get themselves in a horrible muddle behind the gainline.

Other than Jordie Barrett, there was no one capable of dealing with the aerial bombardment they faced and it proved to be a chastening series.

This is largely why this Test against Ireland is so important - it is a chance for the All Blacks to see how much they have learned and adapted since the series with South Africa

They found out that they hadn’t taken the giant strides they thought they had in improving their scrum and breakdown work.

Their ball carrying lacked the physicality and intensity to buckle the Springboks defence and they hadn’t built the composure and certainty to make good decisions in the face of the defensive rush.

And this is largely why this Test against Ireland is so important - it is a chance for the All Blacks to see how much they have learned and adapted since the series with South Africa.

There were positive signs against Wales that they have patched up their lineout, bolstered their scrum and accepted that rugby in the North demands patience and a willingness to break teams down first before opening them up.

But it was a weakened Welsh team and Ireland will ask harder questions about whether the All Blacks really have developed their attrition rugby.

Essentially, the All Blacks want to see if they can do to Ireland what they did to Wales: play physical, set-piece rugby to break them down, turn them with their kicking game and earn the right to play east to west only after they have managed to effectively go north to south.

They will be prepared to bide their time, be controlled and disciplined, kick their goals and then look to push the tempo and play wider once they have built scoreboard pressure.

That was their plan the last time they were in Dublin, but instead they were beaten up in the forwards and failed to score a try.

Avenge the loss

It was a loss that cut deep into their psyche and Ireland paid for it a year later at the World Cup.

The All Blacks wanted to avenge the loss in 2018 as much as they wanted to progress to the semi-final, but that 46-14 hammering in Japan shouldn't be seen by the Irish as a restoration of normal service.

The All Blacks are of the view that the World Cup game sits as an anomaly among the last five Tests these two have played, something Beauden Barrett wanted to make clear this week: “We’d be foolish not to learn from the previous games. They’re a serious side and we have so much respect for them.

"We know how physical they are, the arm-wrestle they like to get into and how tactically good they are. They're technically sound but very good tacticians, Conor Murray and Jonathan Sexton run a good cutter.

“So we’re going to have to work hard to break this team down, it will take a lot of discipline. They are a very good side.”

And maybe the real reason this game is so important is that the All Blacks simply can’t afford to lose again in Dublin for fear that it may appear to be getting habitual.

Gregor Paul is the rugby correspondent of the New Zealand Herald on Sunday and the editor of Rugby World magazine