It's true - there are June tests to savour
PLUS: The BYC player ratings for the Black Caps are in - and they're unkind.
The June tests are normally as mouth-watering as saveloy soup.
A succession of weakened Northern Hemisphere teams have trooped down here after long domestic seasons with the sort of enthusiasm Stanley Hudson musters for Dunder Mifflin away days1.
This feels different.
Ireland have become a nemesis rather than a curiosity. There’s a sense that Fortress Eden Park has never been so vulnerable.
It might be a bilateral series with nothing but pride at stake but it feels like there is real jeopardy at play - most of it on the All Black side of the ball.
The Covid disruptions have added a little twist and from what I’m hearing in conversations from Mt Maunganui to Mairangi Bay, put Ian Foster in a no-win situation.