New Zealand captain Sam Whitelock is looking forward to another chapter in a growing rivalry with Ireland as the teams prepare to meet in the autumn international series on Saturday.
Ireland have won two of their last four tests against the All Blacks since breaking their 111-year drought in 2016 and Whitelock said it was a contest New Zealand looked forward to.
“This week is massive. If you look back over the last five or six times we’ve played Ireland, they are big games and big occasions,” Whitelock told reporters on Friday.
“Especially here (in Dublin), it’s an amazing atmosphere that is hard to describe.
“The rivalry has been there for a long time. Some of my first games were against the Irish in New Zealand and were tough. Sometimes the scoreboard didn’t reflect that.
“Great teams get up and play well, and we will never be disappointed with what the Irish bring. We also don’t want to disappoint them and so must put our best foot forward.”
New Zealand may be winding down their season but Whitelock said there was still plenty left in the tank and he praised the coaching staff’s squad rotation for keeping the players fresh.
“It’s nice seeing the energy of the boys. The squad in general is in a good spot and we’ve had some great training this week. Management have done a great job of holding some players back and managing when they play,” he said.
Whitelock is sure Ireland will have a few tricks up their sleeve at the weekend and said the All Blacks will have to react quickly to those plans.
“We do talk about it. We ask, ‘If we were playing us, what would we do?’. That is part of the sport that our senior players and management love, the whole chess game of international rugby.
“(If Ireland come with something different) we have to have things in our head straight away that will hopefully put us on the front foot.”
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