A last gasp penalty miss from Australian substitute Ben Donaldson seen Ireland escape with an opening round victory.<\/p>\n
Dylan Pietsch crossed for the game\u2019s opening try after four minutes giving the Wallabies an early lead in Sydney.<\/p>\n
Ireland responded with a Cian Prendergast try five minutes later. However, Australia retook the lead when Jock Campbell crossed over with the Irish defence was coming under pressure early on.<\/p>\n
Josh Van Der Flier responded for the visitors after 19 minutes, as Ireland went back in front, 12\u201310.<\/p>\n
Australia were in again following a Rob Valetini break. Josh Canham on hand to go over for the hosts. Ryan Lonergan had Australia\u2019s fourth try soon after when Sam Prendergast had his pass picked off.<\/p>\n
Australia looked set to take a double score lead into break 24\u201312. However, Jameson Gibson Park received a Jack Conan offload, touching down leaving just five between the sides at the break.<\/p>\n
Ireland took the lead after 45 minutes. Hugo Keenan timed his run to perfection, gathering a Gary Ringrose pass as Ireland went ahead following the conversion, 26-24.<\/p>\n
Tate McDermott put the hosts back in front after 51 minutes with a tap and go from inside the Irish 22. That followed a free-kick awarded against the visitors scrum for an early engagement.<\/p>\n
Ireland thought they had retaken the lead on 55 minutes but Dan Sheehan saw his try overturned by the TMO for an obstruction caused by James Ryan in the build-up.<\/p>\n
Andy Farrell emptied his bench and it was the replacement Thomas Clarkson who crossed for what proved to be the all-important score.<\/p>\n
Ireland fightback late on<\/p>\n
77 minutes were on the clock as Clarkson crossed the whitewash. Sam Prendergast converted giving Ireland a two point advantage.<\/p>\n
However, there was time for one more twist as Bundee Aki seen a penalty awarded against him.<\/p>\n
The subsequent penalty effort from Ben Donaldson floated to the right and wide much to the relief of the large Irish support in the Allianz Stadium in Sydney.<\/p>\n
Ireland getting their campaign up and running with a two point win ahead of next weekend\u2019s meeting with Japan down under.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A last gasp penalty miss from Australian substitute Ben Donaldson seen Ireland escape with an opening round victory.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-533069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}