Despite already playing twice on home soil in the inaugural Nations Championship, New Zealand will relish a return to Eden Park, where they have not lost a Test since France were the victors in 1994.<\/p>\n
However, the New Zealand coach said they cannot rest on their laurels when they welcome an Ireland side who are unbeaten in six games.<\/p>\n
“It’s always nice going to Eden Park. It’ll be nice having a lot of supporters cheering for us,” he continued.<\/p>\n
“It’s been a fortress, but what’s happened in the past counts for little. It’s about us making sure we get our prep right and mindset right.<\/p>\n
“To play against an Irish side who, last time they toured this country, they won a series.”<\/p>\n
Rennie also added the importance of closing down New Zealand-born scrum-half Jamison Gibson-Park.<\/p>\n
The Leinster half-back crossed during Ireland’s tight 33-31 victory over Australia but did not feature in the much-changed team that faced Japan.<\/p>\n
“Leinster have had a massive influence on Irish rugby for a lot of years. I like their combinations. They’re really strong. Jamison’s a big part of their success. <\/p>\n
“We need to make life difficult for him so he can’t play on the front foot and apply pressure that way.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite already playing twice on home soil in the inaugural Nations Championship, New Zealand will relish a return…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-547998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}