19 Nov 2018

Loss to Ireland will be useful for All Blacks

9:42 am on 19 November 2018

The loss to Ireland could turn in to a useful experience for a team that's so used to winning, says All Black coach Steve Hansen.

Ireland beat All Blacks 2018.

Ireland beat All Blacks 2018. Photo: PHOTOSPORT

Ireland beat the All Blacks for the first at home, with a 16-9 win in Dublin yesterday morning.

In a low-scoring game, Ireland produced a classic try and kept New Zealand try-less for the first time in more than four years.

Hansen said the players were gutted with the result.

"You don't win as many rugby matches as this All Black team has and then when you get beaten it hurts. So it's very quiet, sombre, people are gutted and that's the way it should be. That's how you should feel when you get beaten," said Hansen.

But Hansen said it could turn into a good lesson.

"This team hasn't suffered much in its tenure over the last three years and when it has it's always learnt plenty so we'll go away and we've got a game next week so we've got to get our feet back on the floor and back into our work."

Hansen said there was a lot of water to go under the bridge before the World Cup but the result proved that no one could really predict who would win next year's World Cup.

"What we do know is Ireland are going to go there feeling reasonably confident and you should because you've got a good side. I think New Zealanders can go there feeling reasonably confident because we've got a good side. England would say the same thing. So isn't it wonderful for world rugby that no one really knows who's going to win the World Cup."

Hansen asserted that Ireland are now the number-one team in the world.

"So if you want to make them World Cup favourites, go ahead. I guess they are favourites."

But Ireland coach Joe Schmidt believed it was odd to call Ireland World Cup favourites, when the All Blacks had been the world number one team for nine years, and continued to be.

Ireland beat All Blacks 2018.

Ireland beat All Blacks 2018. Photo: PHOTOSPORT

He said a lot of things were stacked in Ireland's favour on the weekend.

"We were at home, they were on the back of quite a long series of games where they've travelled around the world a number of times. I thought the crowd were phenomenal tonight. That's a lot of things stacked in our favour so we'll take tonight and we'll leave 11 months for 11 month's time," said Schmidt.

He also said it was irrelevant whether they were labelled favourites.

"Being called World Cup favourites, what do you tangibly gain from that? If we train well, there's some tangible gain, if we put a set play together and execution's good we get something tangible from that. We can't really control what people say but we can try to control how we prepare and play."

Schmidt said Ireland were probably let off the hook a few times during the win.

"You know Kieran Read, how many times would you see him knock that charge down on, there was no one in front of him ...you've got to be proud about the way the guys scrambled but at the same time you've got to be realistic - there's three pretty clear cut chances that they didn't take and we took one of a couple we maybe had."