It's true - there are June tests to savour

PLUS: The BYC player ratings for the Black Caps are in - and they're unkind.

When it feels like the whole world is against you, sometimes all you need is a good hug. Photo / Getty Images

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.