Having spent the week calling the Miracle Mile home, Saturday provided a microcosm of Stuart McCloskey’s journey down the road with Ireland. Some ferocious strides forward, a few frustrating ones back.
At 33, the Ulsterman won just his 22nd cap in Ireland’s centre and delivered the stand-out performance in green, carrying with confidence, power and penetration. The post-match stats said he’d had the most carries of any Irish player and gained the most metres with them. The eye test had already been passed with flying colours.
His numbers were all the more impressive given his afternoon was cut short. A groin twang did what not many All Blacks could and stopped him in his tracks on 57 minutes. It was striking that as he left the field, Ireland’s performance soon began its alarming slide.
Hobbling through the mixed zone in the concrete bowels of Soldier Field afterwards, McCloskey tried to weigh up a day that meant a lot personally but in the wider picture hadn’t gone the way Irish minds had envisioned. He was adamant their autumn doesn’t need to be defined by its opening act.
“The hope probably comes from the talent in the group. There’s a lot of very good players in there,” said McCloskey. “One bad game doesn’t make a bad team. You wouldn’t hide from it, it definitely makes the next month more challenging, but this team’s bounced back before.
“We saw that in South Africa a couple of summers ago after losing the first Test, in New Zealand a few years ago when we lost the first Test and ended up winning 2-1. Hopefully the lads bounce back in the right way starting with Japan next week.
“We were right in that game until 60-odd minutes. We just let it get away from ourselves a wee bit, probably lapses in concentration. It’s hard to tell when I’m sitting on the bench with ice on my groin but we need to go back and look at it as a team.”
Having had a sense that a long-awaited start was coming his way, the Bangor Banger was keen to keep a lid on things.
“Faz asked me before ‘what’s your thoughts on the day?’ I was like ‘just be calm’, I think I play my best rugby when I’m quite chilled out, getting the ball in my hands and play it like a kid out there,” added McCloskey. “Just get in the right possessions, try to do the right thing and don’t try to make it bigger than what it is.” Yet his impact could indeed have been bigger. A couple of offload attempts at the end of two barnstorming carries almost told, one which would have sent Jamie Osbourne in pawed away by Ardie Savea.
“I thought it went alright, I had some good impacts on the game, I wish a couple of the offloads had stuck. I just saw [jamie] coming and Ardie [Savea]’s hands just popped up last minute. It was tough. I think Jamie would have been under the posts, it’s one of those ones you go for. Some days they stick, some days they don’t.”
His status for next weekend’s meeting with Japan is unclear. There’s a long-haul flight to get through first but the Australia game the following week may be a more likely return.
“I’d love this groin to be alright. I’d love to get back out there, if not next week then the week after and put another foot down. There’s another two guys in there, two Lions, waiting to go as well, it’s very competitive, you don’t want to give up the spot without a bit of a fight.
“I had to say to myself maybe six or seven years ago to be patient and stick at it. I always thought if I got a couple more caps when I was on three or four caps I’d be happy, but I’ve just tried to stay in there. Hopefully I’ve pushed them on a bit, they’ve got a few Lions tours out of it so they can thank me for that.”
Ryan Baird was the other selection to fully justify Farrell’s faith, even if the coach held back a little bit in his praise, Farrell saying “he’ll be happy with some aspects of his game definitely”.
From the get-go, the Leinster back row spent as much of his afternoon as possible on the front foot. He used his hands to disrupt the All Blacks lineout with a couple of eye-catching steals too. Yet the sense of regret was hard to shake.
“I just felt like we had them on the ropes. We started well, we were carrying well, striking well, and then we let them off the ropes and we let them play,” said Baird afterwards. “They had their own tactics which once they got a bit of confidence and momentum, they were able to implement. It was kind of like a rollercoaster of a game, you know, there was ups, there was downs, frustrating.”
CUT FOR PRINT HERE But like McCloskey, there was personal pride too. In earning a starting berth, Baird was fulfilling a vision he’d had for himself some time ago.
“I hadn’t played against New Zealand before, so that was kind of a nice opportunity to play against them here,” he said. “I finished the summer well last year and I made this a game that I would have liked to have played in and I got the opportunity to do that, so I was just very excited coming into it.
“I watched this game back in 2016. I was 17. I was here three years ago on holidays with friends of mine and I remember literally walking around the outside of the stadium with my mates and to be back here three years later is pretty, pretty cool. So I didn’t build it up to anything more than it was and I remember saying to Josh out there 10 minutes in, I was like, ‘Mate, it’s just another game of rugby,’ which has its ups, downs, challenges and everything in between.”