The IRFU may be disconnected from a chunk of their audience on the price of Test rugby at Lansdowne Road but at least those who ponied up large can claim to have witnessed a truly crazy event. Back in the 2013 Six Nations in Rome Ireland had their backline sundered by a freakish run of injuries, leaving holes being filled by men who didn\u2019t know how to hold a shovel. But here, on a perfect night for rugby and with a game promising to develop into a gripping contest, we saw four players banished for crimes and misdemeanours in the first half alone. Mad stuff, at the end of which the world champions stumbled to a win that should have been managed with half the effort.<\/p>\n
The passage to the overflowing sin bin was halted only by the half-time whistle, at which point the referee, Matt Carley, was booed off the field with a venom you don\u2019t often get at these events. Their sense of injustice kicked off with the decision not to card Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu for a dangerous tackle on Tommy O\u2019Brien.<\/p>\n
So South Africa took with them a 19-7 lead and the knowledge they would be starting the second half against 12 men, albeit not for long. Ireland meantime were down the corridor with Andy Farrell wondering what pieces he could move around a very bare-looking chessboard.<\/p>\n
The coach had seen James Ryan go first, on a yellow card escalated to red for a no-arms clean out on Malcolm Marx. The traffic became turbo charged in the last eight minutes of the half with Sam Prendergast, replacement Jack Crowley and then Andrew Porter all going off for a variety of offences.<\/p>\n
James Ryan leaves the pitch after being shown a yellow card that was subsequently upgraded. Photograph: Brian Lawless\/PA<\/p>\n
It was only in that bizarre passage that the Boks actually got to grips with turning their pronounced dominance at the scrum to something material on the scoreboard. They looked less confused when playing against 15 men, putting Damian Willemse over for a try inside four minutes. That said, they looked happy enough early in the second half when Sam Prendergast was back on the file to kick a penalty, only for his brother to spill the restart. With yet another scrum penalty advantage to play with Feinberg-Mngomezulu, a serious athlete with a surfeit of skill, fended Jamison Gibson-Park en route to the line. That put the Boks 24-10 ahead, and looking safe.<\/p>\n
Quick GuideIreland v South Africa teams and scorersShow<\/p>\n
Ireland: Hansen (Farrell 65); O\u2019Brien (HIA Crowley 32), Ringrose (Gibson-Park 75), Aki, Lowe; Prendergast, Gibson-Park (Casey 66); Porter (McCarthy 73), Sheehan (Kelleher 56), Furlong (Bealham 60), Ryan (C Prendergast 40), Beirne, Baird (Conan 60), Van der Flier (McCarthy 42; Porter 50; McCarthy 60; Porter 63), Doris (capt)<\/p>\n
Red card:\u00a0Ryan 21<\/p>\n
Yellow card:\u00a0Prendergast 34, Crowley 40, Porter 42, McCarthy 63<\/p>\n
Try: Sheehan. Pens: Prendergast 2. Con: Crowley 1<\/p>\n
South Africa: Willemse; Moodie, Kriel, De Allende, Kolbe; S Feinberg-Mngomezulu (Libbok 59) C Reinach (Williams 69); B Venter, (Steenekamp 42), M Marx (Grobbelaar 66; Marx 73), T du Toit (Louw 42; Du Toit 73), E Etzebeth (Snyman 50), R Nortje, S Kolisi (Esterhuizen 59), P-S du Toit, J Wiese (Smith 54)
Yellow card: Williams 79<\/p>\n
Tries: Willemse, penalty try, Reinach, Feinberg-Mngomezulu. Con: Feinberg-Mngomezulu
Referee: Matthew Carley (Eng)<\/p>\n
Thank you for your feedback.<\/p>\n
Not so safe that they could order-in and open a bottle of red, but given they had the combination to the penalty safe there was no secure route Ireland could take in pursuit. Consider that in a six minutes spell in the second quarter South Africa put Ireland on the rack, twisting seven penalties from the home side with the scrum the primary source. And that was before the hemorrhage of home players started, then continued in the second half when Paddy McCarthy was yellow carded.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week’s action reviewed<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Even so, South Africa spent the last few minutes frantically defending their own line, with the slim comfort of a two-score lead, which they held until Carley blew for the last time, kicking off another chorus of boos.<\/p>\n The Boks looked relieved, but that will last only until the review: how could a team so dominant at set piece, and with a decent all-court game to match, could end up in hand to hand combat to get over the finish line. To their credit they sailed close to the wind in keeping Ireland out, and ironically ended up a man short when Grant Williams was binned with a minute left. They will look forward to their holidays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The IRFU may be disconnected from a chunk of their audience on the price of Test rugby at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-302121","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}