Ireland will be up against it when they launch their assault on All Blacks’ Eden Park fortress

It’s a measure of the newfound competitiveness of the rivalry between New Zealand and Ireland that the first Test in Auckland has long since been a near-50,000 sell-out. A further indicator of this — along with the All Blacks’ stated intent to go one-nil up in the three-Test series — is that next Saturday’s game will take place in their Eden Park fortress.

With a capacity of 48,300, all public tickets at Eden Park were sold more than a month before kick-off. The capacity at Wellington’s Sky Stadium has also been expanded to meet demand, with an additional 3,000 temporary seats for the third Test of the Steinlager Series on Saturday July 16th.

Tickets are also selling well for the second Test at Forsyth Barr Stadium in Dunedin on July 9th.

The All Blacks regard Eden Park as their banker venue and with good reason. They have been unbeaten at their Auckland fortress in 46 consecutive Tests stretching back to 1994, when they lost 23-20 to France. The All Blacks subsequently drew their next game, against South Africa (18-18) in 1994, since when they have won 44 and drawn one of their last 45 Tests at the venue, the exception being that 15-all draw in the third Test against the British & Irish Lions (15-15) in 2017.

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Considering the Lions had also ended a 16-game winning run by the All Blacks in Wellington in the second test, drawing that series looks an even finer achievement now.

Andy Farrell was one of Warren Gatland’s assistants on that tour, in what looks like being the last 10-match expedition to the southern hemisphere by the Lions given their trek to South Africa two years ago was reduced to eight matches.

Hence, by adding on two additional matches against the Maori All Blacks, Farrell and this Irish squad are undertaking a tour not far off Lions levels, making it one of the most daunting summer assignments taken on by any northern hemisphere country in the pro era.

“It’s like ourselves, we’re hard to beat at home,” said Farrell in advance of this expedition. “They’ve been number one in the world for a long time and yes they had a couple of losses last year, but they’ll be hurting from that. They’ll see this as the start of their World Cup campaign as well, I’m sure, and they’ll want to hit the ground running for their international season.

“There’s no harder place to go in world Rugby than New Zealand. If you look at it, the five games that we’ve got, does it get any harder? Is the World Cup harder than that? I don’t know. I suppose we’ll see that on the road, but this is what we’re facing and unless we meet that challenge head-on then it’s going to be a tough old tour.”

Viewed in that light, it is not inconceivable that Ireland will lose all five games, while three wins out of five would constitute a good tour, but just as important as making a breakthrough first Irish win on New Zealand soil against the All Blacks is improving the squad’s depth. Even the dogs in O’Connell Street know that Ireland’s front-row cupboard is not exactly overflowing. Were Jeremy Loughman and Tom O’Toole to emerge as credible options at prop, it would be a huge boon in a problem area.

Indeed, it’s something of a surprise that Farrell and co didn’t dig deeper, especially into the front-row reserves, and bring a squad of 42 or more. After all, between them, the All Blacks and New Zealand Maoris are bringing more or less twice that number, both in the front-row and overall.

The demands on a squad of 40 players, and particularly on the six props and three tightheads, will be severe, with five games in a period of 18 days. This is all the likelier after world Rugby’s welcome extension to extend the minimum stand-down period for most concussed elite level players to 12 days from July 1st, the day before the first Test.

Not only have Ian Foster and co named half a dozen props and three hookers for the three-test series alone, but they have included the 12-times capped Blues loose-head Karl Tu’inukuafe, even though he is joining Montpellier for the coming 2022-23 season, having previously played in the French Pro D2 with Narbonne in 2015/16. Tu’inukuafe has thus sacrificed any chance of playing in next year’s World Cup in France, yet is still included in the All Blacks’ squad for this series against Ireland.

Compare and contrast with the non-selection of Charles Piutau, omitted from the 2015 All Blacks’ World Cup squad due to his confirmed move to Ulster in 2016.

The selection of Tu’inukuafe is untypically short-term thinking by the All Blacks. It suggests that they are perhaps a little concerned about their own scrum, or hell-bent on targeting Ireland there. Or that Foster and co are feeling the heat as a consequence of ending a difficult 2022 in lockdown with those back-to-back defeats by Ireland and France. On top of which, Scott Robertson guided the Crusaders to an inaugural Super Rugby Pacific title last weekend, following on from an unprecedented three Super Rugby titles in his first three seasons (2017-19) as well as two successful Super Rugby Aotearoa championships in 2020 and 2021.

Anyone would feel the heat from that body of work.

The convincing nature of the Crusaders’ 21-7 victory over the Blues in last Saturday’s final is at best a mixed blessing for the All Blacks. All told, 11 Blues players were included in the All Blacks’ 36-man squad on the back of their 14-game winning run prior to the final.

Against that, the exclusion of TJ Perenara, capped 78 times by the All Blacks, for the first time in the Maori All Blacks’ squad along with Brad Weber — who will be playing on his home ground in Hamilton next Wednesday — is likely to intensify the challenge faced by Ireland in the two additional games.

All well and good, for increasing Ireland’s strength in depth with the World Cup in mind is very much a major part of this expedition. It’s why 20-year-old lock Joe McCarthy has been fast-tracked into the squad. Opportunity knocks for a host of others, including the Harry Byrne-Ciaran Frawley 10-12 axis flourishing in the sub-Test environment of a match against a fired-up Maori All Blacks.

“Well, I don’t know if it is just about results,” said Farrell regarding what would constitute a good tour. “I think it’s about us growing as a group, seeing how we deal with the pressure that is coming our way.

“We all know what’s coming — how we react to that and perform is key. If you asked any of the players, of course they want to win, but I want to see us grow as a group.

“I want to see all parts of our game grow, I want to see how we treat each other on and off the field, that’s going to stand us in great stead for the year ahead.”

Upping the intensity of the rivalry between the two, as with that thrilling 29-20 win over the All Blacks at the Aviva Stadium last November, comes with consequences. As Joe Schmidt noted in the immediate aftermath of Ireland’s win in Chicago in 2016, they “may have poked the bear”, and so it came to pass in the All Blacks’ brutal revenge mission a fortnight later in Dublin.

“Yeah, we expect them to be at their best, like we always do. We beat them before and got on the end of a good hiding on the back of it,” said Farrell in reference to the All Blacks’ vengeful and clinical World Cup quarter-final victory by 46-14 less than a year after their 16-9 defeat in the Aviva.

“Again, it’s priceless for us, we will find out more about ourselves. Who is going to front up and perform at a level that they probably didn’t think they could perform at? That’s what we’re after, pushing the boundaries.”

At least the nine-strong contingent of Crusaders players have reacquainted themselves with that Championship-winning feeling, and, to put the all-South African URC final in perspective, there’s little or no chance they’d have done that in Super Rugby at the expense of the New Zealand franchises.

What’s more, by contrast all the Irish provinces finished the season anticlimactically, even Leinster, although one senses Farrell is a little miffed at the erroneous perception his Irish team are a green-tinged extension of the boys in blue.

What’s more, the players are returning to an environment they love, and a winning one.

“A lot gets said about Ireland and are they playing like Munster, are they playing like Leinster, are they playing like Ulster etc. We’re Ireland, we’re our own team, you know? We play our own way and we’ve come up against big teams before and been unbelievably physical.

“Physicality is not just about fronting up, it’s how you play the game and how you get opportunities to create space to be able to get over the gainline and be able to be aggressive in the right parts of the game. I think we’ve done pretty well of late in that type of scenario.

“So no,” he concluded in reference to the provinces’ recent setbacks, “it doesn’t affect us at all.”

Yet in the heel of the hunt, Ireland are revisiting a country they last visited a decade ago, signing off with a 60-0 defeat, albeit a week after one questionable scrum interpretation by Nigel Owens denied them a win in Christchurch.

In a dozen Tests in New Zealand, Ireland have lost the lot, so learning the lessons from a couple more wouldn’t be the worst outcome in the world, especially if there was a historic first win.

Ireland 2022 Summer Tour Fixtures (all times Irish)

Maori All Blacks v Ireland

FMG Stadium, Hamilton, Wednesday June 29th (KO: 8.05am)

New Zealand v Ireland

Eden Park, Auckland, Saturday July 2nd (KO: 8.05am)

New Zealand v Ireland

Forsyth Barr Stadium, Dunedin, Saturday July 9th (KO: 8.05am)

Maori All Blacks v Ireland

SKY Stadium, Wellington, Tuesday July 12th (KO: 8.05am)

New Zealand v Ireland

SKY Stadium, Wellington, Saturday July 16th, (KO: 8.05am)

All games live on Sky Sports