Another landmark night for Dan Carter, the brilliant New Zealand fly-half, was overshadowed by the sending off of Ireland's Jamie Heaslip in New Plymouth yesterday. In the course of a thumping 66-28 victory, Carter became the fourth player to pass 1,000 points in Test matches, joining the exclusive trio of Jonny Wilkinson, Neil Jenkins and Diego Dominguez. He has now also kicked more conversions than any other player. But the talking point of the night was the dismissal of Heaslip, the No 8, for the use of knee at a ruck after just 15 minutes. It got worse for the visitors when Ronan O'Gara was sin-binned for cynical play midway through the first half.
A rampant New Zealand side made Ireland pay a heavy price for their indiscipline. Jimmy Cowan, Conrad Smith and Sam Whitelock, the replacement lock, all scored two tries while Carter landed a penalty and seven conversions in a flawless kicking performance as the All Blacks preserved an unbeaten record against Ireland, which now stretches to 23 Tests over 105 years. "It was a horror show," Declan Kidney, the Ireland coach, said. "We gave away a lot of soft tries, missed tackles. We'll have to have a long hard look at that. We'll take a look at it [the discipline]. I wouldn't be saying anything. Let's take a look when we calm down a bit."
Kidney was encouraged by the second-half performance that yielded tries for Dan Tuohy, Brian O'Driscoll and Tommy Bowe to add to Gordon D'Arcy's first-half score. "They picked themselves up at half time, you saw that," said the coach. "We managed to keep the ball a little better in the second half." Richie McCaw, the All Blacks captain, was happy with his side's performance, especially the debutants Israel Dagg, Benson Stanley and Ben Franks.
"The way we started the game, we're pretty happy with," he said. "There's always going to be stuff to work on but I'm pretty happy. "All the boys who played their first game had a pretty good day." * Agencies
