You didn’t have to be a lip reader to understand Luca Sexton. Like almost everyone who was wearing a green jersey at that moment, the 23 players of the Irish rugby team, the more than fifty thousand compatriots at the Stade de France and countless numbers at home on the island, the eight-year-old rubbed a few tears from his eyes. But then he calmly looked up at his father and said: “You’re still the best dad”.
Johnny Sexton was still the best dad, but the 38-year-old was no longer a rugby player at that moment. After 17 victories in a row and the jump to the top of the world rankings, the Irish fairy tale and the dream of becoming world champion were over – after a “titanic battle”, a “quarter-final for eternity”. This is what the New Zealand media called the 28:24 victory of the “All Blacks”, who will now face Argentina in the semi-finals (29:17 against Wales). For the eighth time in the ten World Cup tournaments since 1987, Ireland have been eliminated in the quarter-finals, but never have they had such a team and such hopes as this time. For Sexton, the celebrated playmaker, named the world’s best rugby player in 2018, it was the end of a great career that lasted 18 years and yet fell two weeks short.
Only a few centimeters were missing. Nine minutes before the end, the Irish seemed to take the lead for the first time, with the advantage following a yellow card for New Zealander Codie Taylor. Ronan Kelleher brought the oval ball into the in-goal – the zone where players have to get the ball to score points – but Jordie Barrett, one of the three Barrett brothers of the All Blacks, managed to get under at the last moment to push the sinking two-hundred-pound colossus. In this way he kept the ball away from crucial contact with the ground.
“We know,” said Barrett, “that in the big matches it is the defense that wins such games.” This was especially true in the final sequence of the game, when the Irish, four points behind, were no longer able to get a penalty not only through the bars (three points) but also through a lay-off in the in-goal area (five plus two possible through elevation). They had to find a hole in the black wall and kept running into it.
But the New Zealanders survived 37 phases of attack in four almost breathless minutes – stopping the Irish attack 37 times in their own defensive zone, without a foul, without any offside position. Then veteran Sam Whitelock managed to win the ball, which ended the game and brought abyssal emptiness into the Irish faces.
The relentlessness that was always evident in the game, especially between the New Zealanders in the New Zealand team and those in the Irish team, seemed to end as if by magic with the final whistle. Jordie Barrett helped a slumped Bundee Aki, one of three Irishmen who are New Zealand natives, to his feet. The outstanding Ardie Savea praised the standard set by the Irish and said: “I send them love.”
Sam Whitelock: New Zealand’s veteran managed to win the ball that ended the game : Image: EPA
And Sam Cane, who surpassed everyone defensively with 21 tackles, explained that he was no longer concerned with last year’s preliminary game – back then the Irish had defeated, even humiliated, the “All Blacks” in New Zealand, and the rough Irishman Peter O’ Mahony vilified the captain Cane as a “shit Richy McCaw”, as, politely translated, a copy of his legendary predecessor. “There are players who try to get under your skin,” said Kane after the triumph in Paris. “We knew that and went into the game with a very clear mindset: just to get the job done and do our thing.”
“That’s what champions do,” acknowledged Johnny Sexton. The perceived result from the Irish perspective: “We had to work harder than they did for our points.” Because that is also something that defines champions: making the opponent’s strengths your own – while preserving your own. In addition to the unexpected toughness of the deep defense, through which New Zealand confronted the Irish with their own resources, the two breakthroughs from their own half into the opponent’s in-goal, which the “All Blacks” showed with all their admirable offensive flair, were also crucial . First, Beauden Barrett outwitted the Irish with a kick over their heads, which he himself delivered. Then Richie Mo’unga improvised a run and pass sequence that he had practiced during training week after a throw-in by fooling two defenders with a passing feint and starting off himself.
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The Irish and their huge, happy supporters, who had previously sang the local catchy tune “Zombie” from tens of thousands of throats after every victory and made it the soundtrack of the World Cup and drowned out the “Haka”, the Maori war dance of the “All Blacks”, before the quarter-finals , fell silent when it was suddenly over. Ireland’s England coach Andy Farrell found consoling words that perhaps resonated with more than just Irish people: “Sport can sometimes be cruel. I think that’s why we love him.”
