The weight of history on their backs. The might of New Zealand facing them. A home crowd behind them.
Judgement day for top-ranked Ireland comes on Sunday in a hugely anticipated Rugby World Cup quarter-final showdown with the All Blacks in what is sure to be another heaving Stade de France bathed in shamrock green.
This game has been 36 years in the making, since the first of Ireland’s seven quarter-final flops. The last four years under Andy Farrell have been spent deliberately confronting and overcoming every possible problem to prime Ireland for this moment.
Beating the All Blacks in a series in New Zealand. Check. Beating reigning world champion South Africa. Check. Beating every other title contender. Check. Proven tournament winner; Six Nations Grand Slam. Check. Player depth to be injury-proof. Check. Consistently ruthless. Check.
It has culminated in the greatest run in the history of Irish rugby — 17 successive test wins launched by two incredible victories in New Zealand in July last year. One more win by Ireland will equal the world’s best streak by a tier-one team.
Only three weeks ago, Ireland proved on rugby’s grandest stage it could withstand the brute power of the then-number-two-ranked Springboks and prevail in a seismic contest.
The Irish, bonded by a large core of Leinstermen and bossed by the ageless Jonathan Sexton, are playing in rarefied air that surviving All Blacks of the world champion vintage of 2015 would appreciate. Those All Blacks under Richie McCaw and Dan Carter were similarly forged by failure and became unstoppable.
But the current vintage of All Blacks are frequently stoppable, and have been since the 2017 tour by the British and Irish Lions, whose line speed disoriented the New Zealanders. England’s power overwhelmed them in the 2019 World Cup semifinals. The four-year reign of Ian Foster has delivered a litany of unwanted records — rock-bottomed by the worst loss in All Blacks history in August — that have been papered over by winning Rugby Championships and Bledisloe Cups.
The All Blacks started this World Cup by losing to host France and dropping their 36-year unbeaten record in the pool stage, and their inconsistency has offered no reason to suggest they will avoid a quarter-final exit, which would equal their worst finish in the Rugby World Cup.
In his last news conference before the match, Foster seemingly clutched at straws by saying the quarter-finals represent a huge mental hurdle for the Irish. It is true. As great as the Irish are, there will be a nagging splinter of doubt that they can triumph until they actually do it.
The All Blacks know the feeling well. Scars from their own failures to actually win the Rugby World Cup saw them choke every four years for 20 years until they won again in 2011.
“We had to deal with the demons of Cardiff and France and people talking about [the] 2007 [quarter-final defeat],” Foster said. “In [the] 2019 [quarter-finals when facing Ireland], it was all about playing a red-hot Irish team who had beaten us the year before and [who were] coming into the [World Cup ranked] number one.”
