SUNDAY SPECIAL

That’s it, that’s the headline.

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NZ 28 IRELAND 24

To be generic, that match is why we invest so much of our spare time watching, reading about and listening to games.

To be sport specific: that’s the sort of mind-bogglingly good contest rugby can deliver at its pulsating best.

Every single player that took that field this morning was, in his own way, a magnificent bastard.

As a contest it managed to be both hyper-strategic and genre-busting. At various points both teams seemed to be able to bend the game and create the shapes they had the pieces for; at other times it felt like everyone and everything was little more than a random collection of atoms that were being controlled by fate and fate alone.