Match Report: Ireland 21 South Africa 23

by

, , ,

Irish Rugby returned home yesterday when Ireland kicked off their Autumn International series at the newly built Aviva Stadium. The match also recognised Ronan O’Gara’s contribution to the sport as he made his 100th appearance for Ireland, and Gordon D’Arcy claimed his 50th cap for his country. Unfortunately, the result was not to be celebrated as Ireland fell to a 23-21 defeat to World Cup champions, South Africa.

To mark the special occasion of the first international match at the Aviva, South Africa waived the unique rugby tradition where, if there is a clash of colours, the visiting team wears its home jersey. This allowed the Ireland team to wear their famous green jersey for the fixture.

Ireland seemed nervous as the game got underway, and it took South Africa just three minutes to unsettle those nerves even further when Morné Steyn dropped back for a drop at goal. His kick was short of the posts but Ireland had been given a glance at the threat the fly-half posed.

Three minutes later and Ireland were caught offside allowing Steyn to opt for the posts and rectify his earlier miss. His kick was on target . . .

You will need to log in or register to read the rest of this article. If you have not already registered you can click here to register.

In 2022 we added 102,631 new images in 510 galleries with a gallery breakdown of 263 Rugby, 217 Hockey and 30 Athletics. Your registration and subscription will help us to continue.

Thanks.


3 responses to “Match Report: Ireland 21 South Africa 23”

  1. the mote

    Ireland were playing against the best lineout forwards in the world who are assured of winning their own and a good % of their opponents ball the weather made the running game extremely difficult and because of the lineout play of the SA the touchline offered very little opportunties to advance down field.

    Redden took too much out of the ball ( given the weather was no assistance ) but Springer did seem to provide a faster service when he came on and RoGs experience provided the springboard of an Irish comeback when Sexton had lost confidence.

  2. Johnny King

    Good to see the fans voted with their feet and stayed away. I hope the IRFU have learned their lesson though we all knew that if they could get away with charging 80 Euro for the 6 Nations games at Croke and were able to sell out the 80,000 seats, they would hardly reduce the prices when they were ‘downsizing’ to Lansdowne Road.

    Stringer and O’Gara made all the difference when they came on. Rory’s arrows were pish.

Corrections, comments or questions?

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.