Watch every second of the 2026 Six Nations live and on demand via Stan Sport.<\/a><\/p>\nEngland did get on the board just before the break through Fraser Dingwall’s try, but any hopes of an unlikely comeback were snuffed out by Dan Sheehan’s try three minutes after the restart.<\/p>\n
With the contest seemingly settled, England captain Maro \u200cItoje was withdrawn \u200cearly on his \u2060100th cap before both sides traded tries in a ragged end to \u200bthe game.<\/p>\n
But Ireland’s win — their biggest ever in England — put them on nine points from three games, one behind leaders France, who host Italy on Sunday. England are fourth on five points.<\/p>\n
“We knew \u200bwe had a lot of Irish support here,” Sheehan said. “We tapped into it well and we came out of the blocks extremely well. That performance right there is right up there with one of the best we’ve had.”<\/p>\n
Last weekend, England had been 17-0 down to Scotland inside the opening 15 minutes and once more they gave themselves a mountain to climb.<\/p>\n
Jack Crowley, replacing \u2060the under-fire Sam Prendergast, kicked an early penalty before James \u200cLowe spurned \u200ban opportunity with an uncharacteristic fumble, but England failed to capitalise on their visits to the 22.<\/p>\n
It proved a tough day on his landmark appearance for Itoje, though he was paid a handsome compliment from Ireland’s excellent Jamison Gibson-Park after the match.<\/p>\n
But the England skipper was dejected as he reflected: “The first half we turned the ball over too much, when we did get in \u200btheir half we \u200cweren’t clinical<\/p>\n
“As players we have to own it. It wasn’t the result or performance that we wanted, so as players \u200bwe have to take responsibility and make sure we’re better.”<\/p>\n
Ford missed \u200btwo simple kicks \u200cfor touch and Ireland managed to keep turning the ball over under pressure, before Gibson-Park took a quick tap-and-go penalty \u200bto skip over for the first try after Baloucoune’s barrelling run.<\/p>\n
Ireland claimed the second try their dominance deserved when centre Stuart McCloskey broke free down the middle and Baloucoune went over in the corner.<\/p>\n
England fullback Freddie Steward \u200bwas \u200bshown a yellow card as Crowley lined up \u200bthe conversion, which he missed, to leave the hosts \u200c15-0 down and reduced to 14 men in almost a mirror image of their slow start against Scotland.<\/p>\n
England struck back with the last action of the first half when Dingwall went over, but Sheehan scored a try almost immediately after Henry Pollock — making his first England start — saw yellow to put the game beyond the hosts.<\/p>\n
Centre Ollie \u200bLawrence pulled a try back for England before Jamie Osborne scored for the visitors with just over 10 minutes \u200bremaining. Replacement Sam Underhill added \u2060a late consolation, but by then many England fans had trudged away from the stadium.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland have blown \u200cEngland away in a record-breaking 42-21 victory at Twickenham to keep alive their slim Six…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":495749,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,1208,26779,760,103300,85],"class_list":["post-495748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-england","tag-ireland","tag-rugby","tag-six-nations","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495748","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=495748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}