Something about New Zealand agrees with the Welsh rugby team.

Wales reached the World Cup semifinals for the second time with a 22-10 win over Ireland in New Zealand’s capital city, 24 years after doing so for the first time and also on New Zealand soil.

It has a New Zealand-born coach, Warren Gatland; the third in a line of New Zealand coaches who have led the Welsh and which includes the current All Blacks coach Graham Henry and his assistant Steve Hansen. And they share with New Zealand the love of rugby as a people, populations of similar sizes that embrace the game as a national sport.

Gatland has built the squad over four years, keeping a core of experienced players but building on that shell a much larger corps of young players. Many of the younger players were the fuel rods of the Welsh victory yesterday.

He brought to Welsh rugby some of the traditional strengths of New Zealand and of its best coaches: the most important being physical conditioning achieved in rigorous training sessions.

Some of those, in Wales’ World Cup buildup, were pre-dawn sessions and involved slogging up sand dunes in the teeth of a biting wind, sessions which left players physically spent. But Gatland said it was that buildup which both unified and galvanized the Welsh team, it was the infusion of youth - including captain Sam Warburton who turned 23 on Wednesday, which left it without baggage or fear.

And that hard work bore fruit in New Zealand, on the opposite side of the world from Wales, but where the Welsh team was able to flower in its own environment, without scrutiny, distraction or negativity.

“The great thing is we’re in New Zealand,” Gatland said. “We’re not in the bubble of Wales so we’re not listening to the pundits every day, we’re not listening to the negative stuff, either, that sometimes comes out of Wales. And just being here has been great. The guys just get on with it day by day.

“I don’t think any team has worked as hard as we have in the past four or five months. Sam (Warburton) said it before the game today. We’ve got up at five o’clock in the morning to do training sessions, we had guys throwing up doing sand stuff and training four or five times a day. These guys went through some pain and when you do that that brings a team together and galvanises the team and I think that’s starting to come out with the youngsters expressing themselves, having no fear.”

Gatland said his faith in the condition of his players, in the experience of some and the fearlessness of others gave him confidence that they would beat Ireland for the second time in three World Cup head-to-heads.

On the same ground where it opened its Rugby World Cup campaign with a 17-16 loss to reigning World Cup champion South Africa almost four weeks ago, Wales outshone the Irish and earned a semifinal place for the second time.

“We know we’re in good shape physically so, to us, it wasn’t a surprise,” Gatland said. “We felt we’ve got better and better as this competition has gone on. There’s no fear factor in the youngsters we’ve got playing and we’ve got great balance of some nice forwards, some size and speed, loose forwards who can carry, a bit of experience up front.”

Warburton was one of the young contingent trusted by Gatland to steer Wales to the semifinals, not yet born when Wales last reached the World Cup semifinals. There were others such as flyhalf Rhys Priestland, backrower Toby Faletau, just 20, and winger George North who also did their share.

“I’ve been eight tests now as Wales captain and it’s just flown by. I feel a lot more at ease now than I did when I first started it,” Warburton said. “All the players and management are really supportive and, as Warren said, it’s a bit easier out here (in New Zealand) because at home it’s a bit chaotic in the Six Nations with all the press, whereas here all eyes are for the All Blacks.

“So I’ve actually found it a lot easier out here, which is surprising.”

Gatland also said being drawn with South Africa, Samoa, Fiji and Namibia in the tournament’s hardest pool was a boost to his team.

“I said all along. It was a very, very tough pool and to come out of it probably held you in a very good stead for a quarterfinal and probably semifinal,” he said. “We were disappointed with the first up loss to South Africa in a game that could have gone either way but we built momentum since then and I think those two wins against Namibia and Fiji when we were well in front showed a ruthlessness that we may not have shown in the past.”