NZ Tour 2022 - Māori June 29th, NZ July 2nd, NZ July 9th, Māori July 12th, NZ July 16th, KO 8.05am

Why do people post objectively incorrect rubbish like this still? I don’t understand it. We’ve brought in younger guys all over the park and have dropped guys in favour of others in numerous positions. How does this cliche still have any traction at all?

If we lose all 3 games then we need to, as Shehal said, review them in the context of what happened. We could lose all 3 by 1 point or all 3 by 20+ points. Those 2 things are not in any way equal at all. We could get lucky with injuries and have strong squads in all 3 games. We could get unlucky with injuries in a couple of key positions and be massively weakened as a result (we do not have the depth some seem to think we have).

I’m enjoying the build up to this but struggling to see us win a test unfortunately. I’m usually quite optimistic when it comes to Irish rugby but it’s a huge ask to go over there at the end of our season especially since a lot of our key players didn’t have a great end to the season. They made an excellent point on the 42 podcast on how NZ will have lots of tape on us and we can only analyse their club teams.

NZ haven’t lost at home since 2018 against South Africa. The year before that they lost to the Lions after SBW rightly got himself sent off. Interestingly both those loses came in Wellington as did the SA draw pre 2019 World Cup which was seen as a huge turning point for their World Cup success in the Chasing the Sun documentary. Beyond that you have to go back to 2009 for their last home loss when South Africa beat them.

I’m well aware this NZ team isn’t as strong as the early 2010s team and is ‘in crisis’ after losing away to us and France in the autumn again after a long season for them. The 6 nations showed France and ourselves were the best teams in Europe over that 6 months so in hindsight those losses weren’t that surprising. We had the opportunity to ambush them in November and I get the feeling they will be paying us back.

I have no doubt the team is going over to win the series but if we managed to sneak one game, be competitive in the other two and see the development of a couple of younger players such as Coombes, Casey, Lowry and McCarthy, I’d be over the moon. Would be great to get a win over the Maori in one of the games too.

The tour is a seriously tough test that will show us how big the gap is going into the World Cup. Hopefully it’ll answer some questions in terms of selection and tactics but it will definitely teach everyone involved a lot no matter how badly it goes.

That's actually not true

A few of them I had to check, I'll admit. But everyone knows Fakatava, Reece, Sowakula and Taukei'aho moved over in their late teens/early twenties. Some of us do actually follow NZ rugby.

I'm not talking about lads born in NZ to Fijian/Samoan/Tongan parents, or even lads who moved to NZ with their families as kids.

I'm talking about the 15/16/17 year olds brought in on rugby scholarships to schools and qualifying on residency. I don't have an issue with it, until Kiwis have a go at Ireland for doing the same thing, just with guys a few years older.

As I said, when you call Joey Carbery a kiwi, you then make loads of the lads in the NZ squad fair game.

The most famous All Black of all time is literally Irish

And thus, we're past dealing in facts and you've decided to make it personal.