Wales 19 – 13 Ireland

It was lost in the 51st minute, with an outrageous try which will be debated, watched and re-watched for many. many years to come – but we’ll come back to that in a minute…

Setbacks started early for Ireland with Eoin Reddan replaced by Pete Stringer after taking a Lee Byrne clearance full in the face, Ireland though were quick to regroup. Less than two minutes had passed before Tommy Bowe drew a tackle and passed to allow O’Driscoll to dive over the line to the left of the posts and score his championship-record equalling 24th try.

O’Gara’s conversion also saw him join an exclusive club of players ( Jonny Wilkinson, Dan Carter, Neil Jenkins and Diego Dominguez) to score 1,000 points.

Wales weren’t to escape injury in a quick opening quarter, when prop Craig Mitchell dislocated his shoulder John Yapp made an early appearance. Wales continued to dominate as time went on, with only a Hook penalty to show for it. Hook cut the gap on 28 minutes through another penalty only for O’Gara to quickly reply to give Ireland a 10-6 advantage.

The game could have turned into disarray with such a high error count had it not been for Kaplan’s willingness to allow a contest at the breakdown to keep the tempo up. Leigh Halfpenny landed a superb long-range penalty to keep Wales in touch.

Sean O’Brien charged into the Wales 22 to generate the final scoring touch of the first half, Philips was punish for not releasing and O’Gara duly converted.

Ten minutes into the second half saw Sexton introduced, and he promptly screwed a kick straight into touch near halfway. Then came the moment that will be debated for many years to come, the try that should never have been…

Sexton’s kick landed in the crowd, ruling out a quick lineout. However a second ball was used by Rees to send Philips dashing down the touchline and past Bowe. Kaplan consulted the touch judge and quickly blew for a try, despite please for O’Driscoll and O’Connell to go to the video ref. Hook added the extra and the job was done.

Ireland seemed thrunderstruck, Fitzgerald had a try disallowed for a forward pass from O’Ccllaghan and Sexton missed a penalty he would normally hit.

Despite a last ditch effort from Cronin, Paddy Wallace and Healy it wasn’t to be, and Ireland were left reading the rule book cover to cover and dreaming of what might have been.

Tags: 6N 2011, disallowed try, ODriscoll, OGara, v Wales, Wales v Ireland
March 12th, 2011 | Posted in Six Nations | 2 Comments »