British & Irish Lions
• British & Irish Lions tour Australia in 2013
Ireland Rugby
6N 2010: Ireland 29 – 11 Italy
It was a rusty performance for Ireland in their opening game against Italy after winning all five games last season to complete the Grand Slam.
A win to celebrate John Hayes 100th cap, and 50th successive appearance in the tournament was nice, but it was less than convincing!
O’Gara had been recalled and became the first player to score 500 points in the tournaments landing all of his six kicks on goal – this is likely to be an ongoing competition between Ronan and Johnny Wilkinson for some time we think!
Jamie Heaslip and Tomas O’Leary both got first half tries, and Italy squeezed on over just before half time (despite being down to 14 men with Gonzalo Garcia in the sin-bin) with Kaine Robertson charging down Rob Kearney’s kick.
It was 23-8 by the break.
Italy scored shortly after on the 44th minute and there was no way Ireland were going to let them get another, even with a massive lull in play and a poor kicking session with O’Gara being the main culprit.
Paddy Wallace came on to take over kicking duties and got another penalty to tie up the game 29-11.
O’Driscoll said:
“It’s not easy to click immediately having only been together for two weeks and not having played together since November,”
Much improvement will be needed for the rest of the tournament!