From the IndoEven in the beguiling, old, amateur days, when Irish forwards went to war with Woodbines on their breath, Lansdowne Road always asked questions of square-jawed tourists. There wasn't a man who could make the likes of Willie Duggan blanch. He might have wheezed like a torn gusset on an uilleann pipe, but he was never bullied in his rugby life.
How many of Saturday's 15 in green could say the same?
Ireland didn't show respect for the All Blacks on Saturday. They showed deference. They played in a strait-jacket of fear. They looked like a team that had weighed up all the odds factored in the vigour and panache of their visitors, the maniacal pace, the suffocating weight of history between our countries - and concluded that the prize just wasn't worth the gamble.
And so they moved through the day like cattle through a heavy marsh, the Blacks treating them accordingly.
Ma'a Nonu flicking Gordon D'Arcy up like a plastic skittle revealed nothing that we didn't already know. It was, though, a moment of pretty startling gall. An expression of disdain for the droning chorus of outrage, still audible, over THAT spear-tackle on Brian O'Driscoll during the summer.
Now, the hunch here is that the media has been pushing this particular boulder more enthusiastically than the public. There was, clearly, no real appetite on the terraces for recrimination towards either Tana Umaga or Kevin Mealamu.
And Eddie O'Sullivan, rightly, distanced himself from the risible, talk-show call to boo the Blacks.
But that shouldn't mean we fawn and curtsy either?
The Haka, for example, is a war-dance. It should be treated as such. When Willie Anderson dragged his team forward in '89, edging closer with every chant until he was practically touching noses with Buck Shelford, he was saying what every opposing team should say to All Blacks performing the Haka. That is 'You don't scare us.'
Disrespectful? How exactly can you be disrespectful to a war-dance?
Those rolling eyes, flicking tongues and stamping hooves aren't wishing you long life and happiness. Of course, the intellectual view sides with a reverential response.
During the summer, O'Driscoll and Clive Woodward were so obsessed with respecting the Haka, they took to picking the brains of some elderly Maoris.
Where did it get them? When O'Driscoll flicked a blade of grass over his shoulder before the first Lions Test, he might as well have been sticking a fork into the mains. It took them roughly forty seconds to get him.
Standing respectfully for the Haka is an absurdity. It amounts to standing in a bar-room, listening politely to how some big bloke plans on re-shaping the contours of your cranium. Or a "cultural display" as the Kiwis like to put it.
On Sunday, a writer in the New Zealand Herald lamented the efforts of Welsh officials in Cardiff last week to squeeze the Haka between both anthems. How impossibly rude of them. Describing it as "one of sports greatest moments," the writer suggested an All Blacks Haka was no more menacing than Scots doing a Highland Fling or English doing a Morris Dance.
Quite.
Prisoners
No matter, there was never much danger of the Haka being squeezed in Dublin. Our players lined up before it with all the vibrancy of prisoners facing a firing squad. And they played as if the bullets were discharged.
That was the horror of Saturday's show. The limpness. The sense of easy acquiescence. Nonu's hit on D'Arcy didn't draw as much as a raised index finger from the Irish team. And that spoke volumes. They were bullied and they took it.
It was a communal thing. A group scanning the team-sheets and knowing their place. Yes, the Blacks played wonderfully at times, but they did so without the context of pressure. It rendered the game an exhibition, virtually from first whistle.
That wouldn't have happened in Duggan's day but then, in Willie's day, a bad hit was forgotten before the first drink was even poured.
Now outrage is recyclable. Now we disinter five-month old corpses in the interest of creating artificial energy (and selling books). Our players prepare like never before. They are bigger and, reputedly, stronger. But better?
If you were an All Black flying out of Dublin this week, your verdict would have been withering.
Vincent Hogan
Colin
