The All Blacks' 'Saturday Night Fever'-themed haka was an apt choice for a team about to dance all over our hallowed turf, writes Frank McNally
IT WAS All Blacks and no Tans in Croke Park on Saturday night, but the latest episode in the stadium's epic history was not much happier for that adjustment.
The occasion had promised much. A visit from the planet's greatest rugby team (between world cups, anyway) turned the buzz of a normal Dublin Saturday evening into a crackle.
As fans headed north from the city centre the excitement in O'Connell Street could have powered the premature Christmas lights.
Catching the mood of unusual atmospheric activity, the All Blacks performed one of their rarer hakas, Kapo o Pango: first seen in 2005 and inspired by the Maori earthquake god.
A cross between a war dance and Saturday Night Fever, the piece has caused controversy elsewhere because of an apparent throat-slitting gesture.
But a translation of the lyrics suggests it is mainly an attempt to bring a piece of New Zealand with the team wherever it travels.
"Let me become one with the land," the players sang. And, pointing at the Croke Park turf, they added: "This is our land that rumbles."
We were hoping the pitch would punish their temerity in making such a flagrantly illegal claim; that the holy ground would rise up and swallow these invaders, as it had the English in 2007.
Sadly for us, the only evidence of seismic activity thereafter were the upside-down pitch-side Paddy Power advertisements. Whatever about thinking it was their land, the All Blacks carried no emotional baggage into Croke Park. And they proceeded to squash all the life out of the occasion.
Only Giovanni Trapattoni could have been excited by the game's first 20 minutes, which ended nil-nil. But so rarely was the Irish team visiting the Canal End half of the pitch that it looked like the visitors had indeed established ownership.
Sensing a crisis, home supporters deployed their own version of the haka - The Fields of Athenry - invoking the dead ancestors to rise, if the ground wouldn't. But this soon petered out and, tellingly, it was not afterwards revived.
As he led Ireland for the 50th time, Brian O'Driscoll - who almost became one with New Zealand's land a few years ago, when the All Blacks planted him head-first in it - threatened a few moments of magic. New Zealand's brilliant out-half Dan Carter also did his bit to keep the game alive - by missing a couple of kicks he normally wouldn't.
But just when some of us were starting to compose Desperate Dan headlines, he landed his third attempt. Then came that harsh penalty try and yellow card against Tommy Bowe. And that, really, was the game.
In a 12-minute spell either side of half-time the visitors went on a shopping spree in north Dublin.
They picked up their second try in Paul O'Connell Street, running at the stricken giant, who had been injured earlier and would soon limp off. When the aptly named Brad Thorn added a third, the visitors were threatening to clean us out altogether. Then a general recession set in. Ireland shut up shop. The All Blacks contented themselves with what they had.
And the game moved to its close uneventfully and in silence, with the home supporters lying as low as those godforsaken fields of east Galway, in no mood to sing.
A few minutes from time, Croke Park's resident PA man reminded everyone that this was a GAA stadium when he advised "na gardaí agus na maoir" to take up end-of-match positions.
And, in truth, despite the famous night against England, rugby's relationship with the ground remains an uneasy one. It may not be an albatross, but it's certainly no fortress either.