Ireland struggle but are deserving Six Nations Champs

Ireland 17, Scotland 13
IT was nailbiting at the finish but Irerland saw out a tense Six Nations finale to lift the Triple Crown and ther title. The capacity crowd expressed their concern in a first half that saw the home side make a string of uncharacteristic mistakes and the 10-6 halftime score left them with a lot to make up in the second 40 minutes.
The fans expected an onslaught right from the re-start but the Scots continually defended their line, running up a high level of defensive tackles. Eventually Andrew Porter grounded the ball to the satisfaction of the referee, Crowley, who missed a kickable penalty earlier, landed the conversion to bring the score to 17-6 and the fans now expected some fluent rugby from the boys in green to quieten the visitors, The opposite was the outcome with the Scots ‘Huw Jones evading a couple of poor tackles to dot down and Russell converting. Ireland had to dig deep and while their performance was well below-par, they well deserved the celebrations as Six Nations Champions with Peter O’Mahony lifting the trophy.
Next up for our international boys is a trip to South Africa in the summer. No doubt there will be a few new faces unearthed for the forthcoming brace of away games against the World champions.

Ireland: Jordan Larmour; Calvin Nash, Robbie Henshaw, Bundee Aki, James Lowe; Jack Crowley, Jamison Gibson-Park; Andrew Porter, Dan Sheehan, Tadhg Furlong; Joe McCarthy, Tadhg Beirne, Peter O’Mahony (capt), Josh van der Flier, Caelan Doris. Replacements: Rónan Kelleher, Cian Healy, Finlay Bealham, Ryan Baird, Jack Conan, Conor Murray, Harry Byrne, Garry Ringrose.

Scotland: Blair Kinghorn; Kyle Steyn, Huw Jones, Stafford McDowall, Duhan van der Merwe; Finn Russell (co-capt), Ben White; Pierre Schoeman, George Turner, Zander Fagerson; Grant Gilchrist, Scott Cummings; Andy Christie, Rory Darge, (co-capt), Jack Dempsey. Replacements: Ewan Ashman, Rory Sutherland, Javan Sebastian, Sam Skinner, Matt Fagerson, George Horne, Cameron Redpath, Kyle Rowe.

Referee: Matthew Carley (RFU)

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