The message has been clear from Eire all week: once they face the All Blacks on Friday, revenge is not going to be on the menu.
Hugo Keenan mentioned it final week from the nice climes of the Algarve, Eire’s second dwelling, and Andy Farrell repeated it when he spoke to reporters in Dublin on Wednesday.
And whereas a lot of the Eire camp would insist they’ve moved on from final yr’s agonising World Cup quarter-final loss in Paris, Tadhg Beirne felt moved to confess that his goals are nonetheless haunted by the expertise. Proof, as if it have been wanted, that the ache stays.
For Eire, Friday’s match – whatever the consequence – can’t banish the damage that hit them like a hammer when, after 37 more and more determined phases, their World Cup was ended when Sam Whitelock gained a penalty for the All Blacks.
To exorcise the ghosts of Paris, they need to wait till 2027.
Friday, nevertheless, no less than provides the world’s number-one facet the possibility to regain the higher hand in a rivalry that has transfixed the rugby world lately.
Certainly, it’s a rivalry that has produced a string of memorable fixtures throughout the globe.
There was Irish ecstasy in Chicago and Wellington, the scenes of Eire’s first win and first sequence conquer the All Blacks, combined with Kiwi pleasure in Tokyo and Paris, the place they condemned the inexperienced machine to their sixth and seventh World Cup quarter-final exits.
There have been beautiful particular person tries, from Jacob Stockdale’s chip-and-chase setting Lansdowne Street alight in 2018, to Ardie Savea’s stunner in Auckland in 2022.
It has introduced pure emotion to the floor, too, from Peter O’Mahony sobbing euphorically in Wellington to Johnny Sexton staring into the abyss in Paris.
And like all good rivalry, it has seen its justifiable share of needle, with Sexton and Rieko Ioane’s Paris spat ratcheting up the stress for this week.
