IT’S ALL COME down to this.
Ireland welcome world champions New Zealand to the Aviva Stadium in the hopes of repeating their 2016 heroics at Soldier Field in Chicago.
Joe Schmidt will be without the injured Conor Murray, while Dan Leavy is a late withdrawal from tonight’s game with the All Blacks. Josh van der Flier slots into the starting line-up in his place.
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Ireland go into the game on the back of their Stateside victory over Italy and an underwhelming win against Argentina in Dublin last week.
“You’ve got be confident when you’ve been as successful as this team has,” said New Zealand head coach Steve Hansen ahead of tonight’s game.
“What we do with the ball ourselves will be important. So when we kick it, we’ve to kick it well, make sure we get a chance to get it back and do a wee bit of suffocating ourselves.”
No doubt the two sides will be sizing each other up and both will see themselves as two of the favourites for next year’s World Cup in Japan.
What do you think the outcome will be tonight?
Let us know.
