Tadhg Beirne was shown a contentious early red card as Ireland\u2019s quest to create more special memories in Chicago ended in an emphatic 26-13 loss against New Zealand. Almost nine years to the day since Ireland\u2019s milestone first victory in the fixture, the All Blacks gained revenge at Soldier Field thanks to tries from Ardie Savea, Tamaiti Williams, Wallace Sititi and Cam Roigard.<\/p>\n
Ireland initially overcame the controversial third-minute dismissal of Beirne for a high tackle on Beauden Barrett, who landed three conversions, to lead through a Tadhg Furlong score and eight points from Jack Crowley. But the All Blacks underlined their class in the second half to cruise to victory deservedly.<\/p>\n
The back-row Savea, who came off the bench in the 2016 loss, said: \u201cThat was nine years ago, but it is nice to come here and rectify that. We\u2019ll enjoy tonight and celebrate the win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Talk of Ireland\u2019s landmark 40-29 success<\/a> fuelled the buildup to a sold-out showdown. Irish hopes of repeating that result suffered a swift setback when the lock Beirne was sent to the sin-bin for an upright challenge on Barrett, pending a review. New Zealand were also dealt an early blow, with Scott Barrett, their captain, limping off.<\/p>\n The fly-half Crowley scored a penalty to give Andy Farrell\u2019s side the lead in the stop-start opening before Beirne\u2019s punishment was upgraded to a 20-minute red card by the French referee Pierre Brousset. In spite of Ireland\u2019s temporary numerical disadvantage, the prop Furlong \u2013 one of four members of the 2016 team in Ireland\u2019s matchday squad \u2013 powered over for the opening try in the 16th minute, only for the All Blacks to hit back quickly through a superb score from Savea after losing the centre Jordie Barrett to a knee injury.<\/p>\n Ireland v New Zealand has developed into a genuine rivalry in recent years, with each side beginning the day with five wins apiece from the past 10 meetings, including the previous clash in the United States. After a big buildup, this encounter was more scrappy than scintillating, not helped by frequent stoppages, which often quelled the capacity crowd.<\/p>\n New Zealand\u2019s Fabian Holland wins a lineout at the home of the Chicago Bears NFL team. Photograph: Erin Hooley\/AP<\/p>\n Iain Henderson eventually replaced Beirne before Caelan Doris made his first appearance since suffering a shoulder injury in May after James Ryan was temporarily forced off for a head injury assessment. Ireland carried a 10-7 lead into the break, which Crowley increased by three points by slotting over a straightforward penalty after missing an earlier attempt.<\/p>\n New Zealand had been well below their free-flowing best but led for the first time in the 63rd minute when Jordie Barrett added the extras after the replacement prop Williams bulldozed over. Scott Robertson\u2019s team quickly added a third try to take control of the contest. Barrett brilliantly held his pass for the charging Damian McKenzie, who raced into Ireland\u2019s 22 and popped the ball to Sititi to claim his first Test try, with the successful conversion making it 21-13.<\/p>\n The scrum-half Roigard wriggled over to extinguish any prospect of an Ireland fightback as Farrell\u2019s first match leading Ireland since his sabbatical with the British & Irish Lions ended in defeat before Dublin appointments with Japan, Australia and South Africa.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week’s action reviewed<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Ireland\u2019s captain, Dan Sheehan, told TNT Sports: \u201cIt\u2019s a bitter pill to swallow. I don\u2019t think we ever really got going. We saw very small patches of what we were looking for but we couldn\u2019t really put the whole picture together.\u201d<\/p>\n He continued: \u201cI thought we were operating about 80% going into that half-time period. We looked to get a bit extra going into that second half. At times we did but there was a lot of inaccuracies at the breakdown and with discipline, so there\u2019s a lot to work on.<\/p>\n \u201cWe thought we were in a good spot, but things didn\u2019t click for us today and we\u2019ll have to have an honest review of that. Hopefully we can bounce back next week and turn it around.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tadhg Beirne was shown a contentious early red card as Ireland\u2019s quest to create more special memories in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-113800","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}