At face value it hardly seems ideal. Reviving memories of the opening Test of the campaign last season – when the All Blacks enjoyed something of a bloodless coup at a Friday night in Aviva decidedly short of feverish – next Saturday week’s clash against the same opponents finds Ireland in even rustier condition.
Take Jack Conan. In the wake of him being one of 18 Irish players on the tour to Australia, the Leinster number eight will make his seasonal reappearance in Soldier Field, Chicago, on Saturday week. Nor he is alone.
“Timing was bad,” he admitted when speaking from Chicago on Thursday about missing Leinster’s defeat by Munster last Saturday in Croke Park after slipping at home and injuring his knee. “Like, I’m fine now, training today. If that game had been a few days later, I probably could have played, but it was just deemed too soon.
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“Mentally, I feel great. It’s not something I’m thinking about and worrying about. I feel fit. I feel like I’ve been training well over the last few weeks.
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“I think I have enough experience now at this stage to just be able to flop back in and pick up where I left off. There’s a few lads coming in similarly. They haven’t played a whole lot of minutes or things like that.
“You just have to get over yourself a little bit. You can’t dwell on these things or make them to be more than they are. Ideally, yeah, it would have been great to have played a little bit, but it is what it is and I don’t really mind too much.
“It’s unacceptable in this environment to have any excuse to not perform well. We’ve had success before.” He cited the 29-21 win over the All Blacks in November 2021 when short of game time save for a game against Japan one week beforehand.
Ireland are also returning to the scene of their breakthrough 40-29 win over the All Blacks in November 2016, which ended a century of hurt and sparked a newfound rivalry.
Conan remembers watching that game from a teammate’s phone on the floor in Parma airport after Leinster had beaten Zebre. “It was like 12-0 or something like that,” he recalled, although actually it was 33-10, with Conan scoring one of Leinster’s five tries. The years can do that.
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As then, the Irish squad have enjoyed, and will continue to do so, off-field extractions such as golf days and attending ice hockey matches. There is also the added factor of Andy Farrell returning to the day job.
Asked if the Lions segue had changed Farrell in any way, Conan said: “No, no, no. Not at all. Still the same, still trying to make us better and grow as a team. It’s great to have him back and it’s great to be back in here in green. Lads are unbelievably excited about the next few weeks.”
Conan also believes that Leinster’s chastening 31-14 loss to Munster on Saturday in the United Rugby Championship can be a beneficial warning, however unpalatable the experience might have been.
“Yeah, we even spoke about it last week in Leinster; you’ve got to make it happen. Just because we show up on the day doesn’t mean we are going to be right physically or mentally, so you’ve got to get yourself to that space, whatever that means for you. Come game day, come kick off, you’ve got to be ready to go.
“We just didn’t show up on the day. Probably one of the worst performances. I don’t want to be dogging the lads because I wasn’t playing. It was pretty disappointing. It’s kind of strange, lads playing that and straight off back into the group and then you are off into camp.
“It’s a good lesson in that it’s no excuses. Other teams are going to pitch up with the right mentality and we need to match them and surpass them at everything else.”
Conan had also been an ever-present in the Lions series in South Africa in 2021 before that aforementioned 29-21 win over the All Blacks.
So he speaks from experience when playing down the oft-held theory that Lions tours can lead to a hangover the following season.
“I don’t think it’s a thing myself. I suppose I was very conscious after the season last year that I’d obviously been on the go for a long time. I think including rehab and whatever else, I was on the go 14 months in a row, so I was conscious of taking enough time to get my body right and switch off and recover and mentally give yourself a bit of space before getting back at it.”
With regard to Tadhg Beirne‘s tour de force in Croke Park last Saturday for Munster, Conan said: “I don’t think anyone has said that Tadhg Beirne had a Lions malaise, if that’s how you put it. Looking at him over the weekend he was fantastic. Obviously things didn’t go right for the Leinster lads against Munster the other day, but there were still some good performances in there and it’s not something that’s on anyone’s mind.
“I think the lads will be fresh and ready to go, and there’ll be no lack of motivation for next week and in the coming weeks anyway.”
