British & Irish Lions
• British & Irish Lions tour Australia in 2013
Ireland Rugby
Breathe Again – Scotland 18 – 19 Ireland
I’ve only just dared breathe again – that was nerve-wracking for minute there. A hard-fought win secured the third triple crown in four years.
O’Gara scored every single one of Ireland’s points, to keep their championship hopes alive in a game that was never a formality. Scotland were up for the backlash having been beaten 37-17 by Italy in their previous game, as Paterson landed six penalties.
“You can’t give 18 points away off the boot and expect to come out on the right side of it. We fortunately did,” said Ireland coach Eddie O’Sullivan.
“It’s nice that we have got it (triple crown) out of the way. It was there, we were talking about it and people were worrying if we could deliver again today. We just about delivered… we have to kick on to Rome now and maybe hope tomorrow England do us a favour.”
If England can beat the unbeaten France tomorrow, Ireland remain in with a shout of the title.
Ireland started well and it looked like it could have been a complete whitewash in the first few minutes, but unforced errors were sneaking in allowing Scotland to build an attack and after an Ireland transgression, Paterson to put them level.
A charge down came back to haunt Scotland, as O’Gara charged down and linked up with D’Arcy and Easterby before linking back up to charge over the line beneath the posts himself. Scotland hit back with a penalty and then O’Gara and Paterson each added a goal to finish the half at 13-9.
Scotland were forced to down to 14 men with the second half sin-binning of Nathan Hines and had to to stretch to prevent a Hickie try after an O’Driscoll trademark break. Scotland struck back with a penalty narrowing the lead to just one point.
Two further Paterson penalties had the Murrayfield crowd in raptures as he made it 18-13, but they were soon silenced as O’Gara kept his composure to nail two goals of his own.