Defeated All Blacks coach Ian Foster heaped praise on Ireland after Saturday's defeat in Dublin.

Foster was assistant to Steve Hansen for the 2016 and 2018 losses, but said this was the best he's seen from an Irish side after the 29-20 loss.

Although he had some qualms about the refereeing and some of Ireland's tactics in slowing things down in the second-half, Foster made no bones about who was the better team.

"They thoroughly deserved their win... I was really impressed by them," he said.

"They held the ball long periods. I thought that we did really really well in our defence hanging in there frustrating them, we took our first two opportunities to score in a pretty clinical way.

"We were really hanging on the game in quite a nice position based on frustrating them a little bit.

"I thought they played a high tempo game that kept us chasing.

"At the end we just didn’t have to composure to take the opportunity we had presented to us and they just played a pressure game.

“I made the point before the game. I felt that there are a lot of similarities (between the current team and previous editions).

"Ireland play a very high retention game. They like to retain the ball and put the system under pressure and we saw that again tonight but there is certainly an ambition to play a bit more ambition around that so it is a little bit wider in how they’re playing, some of the phase stuff and how they counterattack.

"Don’t get me wrong, I think that was a very good performance and probably the best performance I have come up against in my time.”

Foster was unhappy with Luke Pearce's decision to rule out an Akira Ioane try when his side were six points behind for a forward pass, while he felt Ireland slowed the second-half down.

"For the last 15 minutes there was a lot of stoppages and there was a lot of cramping," he said.

"There was a lot of deliberate slowing the game down which was a bit frustrating.

"Sometimes, when you don’t have a lot of ball you have to send a lot of people to rucks whereas whereas we could commit only one tackler.

"I think it sucked a lot of juice out of the end as well so I think it was the ability to take the opportunity when it was presented to them was the difference in the game.

"When you are playing a real quality team you have to do that.

"Akiri’s try was really, really marginal."

Foster believes his team will learn from the experience. They play France next week, while Ireland are due in New Zealand for a three-Test series next July.

"I think it's three years since we’ve been up here. For a number of the players that haven’t been in a big Test up here it’s very different. It’s a very high pressure game," he said.

"You’ve got to deal with it at the top end you’ve to be disciplined.

"I think there was a little bit of frustration not getting the ball and then we started to conceded some penalties.

"That’s the big thing is the type of pressure the other team opposed on us.

"Sometimes you just have to roll up your sleeves and fight your way back into the game. That’s what we were doing but it just got a little bit sharp at the end of the game and even the one with Peter O’Mahony who got a penalty."