Ireland Go Top of Pool A By Beating Russia

Ireland have gone to the top of Pool A by beating Russia this morning in Kobe. The 35-0 win marked Ireland’s first ever shut-out victory in a RWC fixture and was also the first time that Russia had been kept scoreless.

The Irish enjoyed a dream start to the match. In just the second minute of play they opened the scoring as Rob Kearney combined with Luke McGrath to run from halfway to score. 7-0 became 14-0 quickly. The second score saw flanker Peter O’Mahony gathering a fortunate bounce from a Jonathan Sexton kick off the post.

Russia were behind but were playing quality turbo. The Irish defense would ultimately keep them at bay and turn their pressure into possession. This saw the first of two Russian yellow cards with second-rower Bogdan Fedotko paying the price for too many penalties.

The one-man advantage saw Ireland converting the opportunity into further points. Flanker Rhys Ruddock went over for the final first half score to give Ireland a 19-0 advantage.

Russia’s resilience continued in the second half. They would prove effective on the counter attack and would concede less points than in the first. Ireland went over for two long-range scores with Andrew Conway and Garry Ringrose being the benefactors.

Russia had an opportunity to score with fly half Ramil Gaisin attempting a long-range penalty. It sailed wide. The Bears, though, did put on a song showing as they conceded 14 second half points, a notable improvement to their match vs Samoa. Russia also had to endure ten further minutes with a man down following the yellow carding of second-rower Andrey Ostrikov.

Russia play next in six days time. Their final RWC 2019 Pool A fixture will be against Scotland on Wednesday in Shizuoka. Ireland play their final pool match against Samoa in Fukuoka on Saturday, October 12.

 

SCORING

IRELAND (35)
Try: Kearney (1′), O’Mahony (12′), Ruddock (34′), Conway (61′), Ringrose (75′)
Conversion: Sexton (2′, 13′, 36′), Carty (62′, 76′)

RUSSIA (0)

TEAMS

IRELAND
1 David Kilcoyne, 2 Niall Scannell, 3 John Ryan, 4 Tadhg Beirne, 5 Jean Kleyn, 6 Rhys Ruddock, 7 Peter O’Mahony, 8 Jordi Murphy, 9 Luke McGrath, 10 Jonathan Sexton (capt.), 11 Keith Earls, 12 Bundee Aki, 13 Garry Ringrose, 14 Andrew Conway, 15 Rob Kearney

Replacements: 16 Sean Cronin, 17 Andrew Porter, 18 Tadhg Furlong, 19 Iain Henderson, 20 CJ Stander, 21 Joey Carbery, 22 Jack Carty, 23 Jordan Larmour

RUSSIA
1 Andrei Polivalov, 2 Evgeny Matveev, 3 Kirill Gotovtsev, 4 Andrei Garbuzov, 5 Bogdan Fedotko, 6 Anton Sychev, 7 Tagir Gazhiev, 8 Viktor Gresev, 9 Dmitri Perov, 10 Ramil Gaisin, 11 Denis Simplikevich, 12 Kirill Golosnitskiy, 13 Igor Galinovski, 14 German Davydov, 15 Vasili Artemyev (capt.)

Replacements: 16 Stanislav Selskiy, 17 Valeri Morozov, 18 Vladimir Podrezov, 19 Andrei Ostrikov, 20 Evgeny Elgin, 21 Sergei Yanyushkin, 22 Roman Khodin, 23 Vladimir Ostroushko