Irish falter as Wallabies win 22-15
The Australian national rugby team beat their Irish counterparts 22-15 on Saturday to remain unbeaten at home against Ireland since 1979.
Despite Ireland taking an early lead, they were unable to sustain their momentum as defensive mistakes allowed Australia to take over the lead at the end of the first half. Finally after the midway point Ireland simply ran out of gas and failed to score a single point afterwards.
For Ireland, the loss continues a string of losses, with the national side falling in international competition for five straight games. For Australia the result is somewhat brighter, although they were the favourites coming into Saturday's match in Brisbane. They recover from a last second defeat at the hands of England, and the boot of Jonny Wilkinson, who lifted their team over the Aussies by a single point.
Australia looked undisciplined in the early part of the game and paid for it, conceding five penalty attempts to Jonathan Sexton. Sexton, who has looked brilliant for the Irish as of late, made no mistake on any of them, netting his team 15 points.
With a few minutes left in the first half, Australia went ahead 16-15 on a try by Quade Cooper, in which the Irish defence made critical errors to surrender the lead. In the second half it was the Australians who showed better discipline, refusing to give Sexton another crack at the ball and scoring two penalties to put the game away.
Improvements needed for both sides
In other circumstances, a 22-15 loss against Australia in Brisbane wouldn't be anything to be ashamed of for the Irish, but their fifth straight loss makes this a tough pill to swallow.
They had the opportunity to win and made defensive miscues on both of Australia's tries, and looked like the better team overall in the first half. But fatigue or mental wear prevented them from coming together in the second half the way they did in the first.
The bright spot is the emergence of Jonathan Sexton, who in kicking every one of Ireland's 15 points, followed up an equally strong performance when he kicked for 23 points against the New Zealand Maoris in a 31-28 loss previously.
Irish coach Declan Kidney tried to put a positive spin on the loss, while acknowledging he was disappointed.
"You can't buy experience, so we gave experience to a number of fellas tonight, and the fact that we're disappointed, does that say something?" said Kidney "I'm as disappointed as anyone that we didn't get the win, but you have to build up experience too and we have some now. And, when that experience will kick in I'm not sure, but we had to build it – there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that we had to do that."
Australia escapes with win
Australia will have to work at their discipline; this was lacking in their first test against England recently, where their scrum was broken repeatedly and they took penalties for it. While they won that game, they lost to England by a point in their second test of the two-game series, where discipline was once again a factor.
Still, they can be proud of the way their team bounced back and shut the door on the Irish. The score could have been greater for the Wallabies as well had Tomas O'Leary not prevented an Australian second-half try with some gutsy defence in deep.
Australian captain Rocky Elsom played well throughout the match, and said he was satisfied with the result but saw things to be improved upon.
"I think we drew 20-20 with them last year and played a lot better in that match but we came out with a win tonight and you've got to be happy when you get up on the scoreboard," Elsom said. "I think we weren't sharp enough in attack tonight. We weren't on the same page and things only work for you when you're on the same page. We weren't tonight but we'll learn from that."
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