Quite apart from the possibility of foul play, there is also the related tiff involving the Irish management, Sky Sports and the New Zealand RFU. Sky were apparently annoyed that Ireland refused to allow cameras into their dressing room. The tourists are perfectly entitled to privacy but when the Irish management asked the NZRFU for a tape of the game so that they could bring an incident to the attention of the match commissioner, Peter Brown, they were told Sky would not be co-operating.
“We’re pursuing the tapes at the moment to look at an incident in the second half so we can pass it on to the match commissioner,” said Eddie O’Sullivan in Auckland last night. “The New Zealand RFU are supposed to get them from the broadcaster but they say they can’t. It’s frustrating, because there is a 12-hour citing deadline.”
Frustration was the general theme at Ireland’s post-match press conference, where Brian O’Driscoll admitted he had been surprised by the decision to award Dermody’s try. Another near-miss against the All Blacks was scant consolation.
“I felt Chris Jack had knocked the ball on,” said O’Driscoll. “I questioned Jonathan (Kaplan) afterwards and he said it had clearly gone back. I haven’t seen the replay but my initial reaction was that it should have been a scrum five to us. Until I see otherwise, I’ll go with that.
“I’d like to think it (losing) will make us hungrier. In the past perhaps Irish teams might have been guilty of accepting close defeats as reasonable results. That’s not the case with this team. We’ve had the exact same situation two weeks in a row. We’ve got ourselves in touching distance of the All Blacks going into the last few minutes and let them off the hook. The boys know they were two big opportunities that passed us by and you don’t know when that next opportunity will come.”
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New Zealand’s coach, Graham Henry, said it was “highly probable” that Jack had knocked on and admitted he had been ill-advised to describe the Irish Tests as “trials” for next month’s Tri Nations. He was just relieved to have won. “I’m delighted for the guys to beat a very good Irish side 2-0,” said Henry. “I don’t think we had appreciated that they’re a very good rugby side, they compete exceptionally well and they’ve very talented players. I think they’ll have a lot of self-belief after this.”