Ireland Finish Strongly With Victory Over Scotland
With one match left to play, Joe Schmidt and his Irish side welcomed Scotland to the Aviva Stadium in a fixture that would offer little consolation for the home side following on from a number of poor displays over the four rounds to date.
Vern Cotter’s Scotland travelled to Dublin with aspirations of ending a promising tournament - in which they had shown their ability to battle with the best of Europe – with a third victory that would ensure them a third-placed finish overall.
After cruising past Italy and defeating France with reasonable comfort over their last two fixtures, Scotland looked a different side in the early stages of their final match against Ireland, a lively home crowd cheered Ireland into early lead that Cotter’s side could not recover from.
Three penalties from Johnny Sexton in the opening quarter of the match enabled Ireland to establish a 9-3 lead.
It was Scotland however who scored the first try of the match; the inspirational Stuart Hogg once again showing his class to get in behind the Irish backline, allowing his captain Greig Laidlaw to kick the visitors into the lead.
The match then took a turn for the worse for Laidlaw and co. as their John Barclay was sent to the sin-bin by referee Pascal Gauzere; and Ireland took full advantage with both CJ Stander and Keith Earls scoring in a four minute spell that may well have won Ireland the match on the half-hour mark.
The final points of the opening 40 minutes were accumulated by Laidlaw to narrow the margin to just eight points, Ireland leading 21-13.
If the match had not been decided though Stander and Earls’ tries towards the end of the first period, then prospects certainly looked doubtful for the away side when Conor Murray crossed less than ten minutes into the second period to score his third try of the competition.
Credit should go to Scotland as they were determined to find a way back into the match, and when Richie Gray crossed, there were still 25 minutes for the visitors to make a late comeback; a reply that looked more likely when Laidlaw cut the deficit to eight points once more with the conversion that followed.
Ill-discipline disrupted the Scottish response late on, just as it had done in the first period; this time it was Alex Dunbar who was sent to the bench for ten minutes as he foolishly put Sexton down dangerously at a ruck.
Moments later, Devon Toner was given the ball by Jamie Heaslip and when the back-row crossed, there was to be no comeback for Scotland who had to wait until the final minutes of the match for a consolation try from Dunbar after the inside-centre returned from his sin bin.
An entertaining match that saw a total of seven tries scored by the two sides was a welcome victory for an Irish side who did not look nearly as strong as the team that won the Six Nations just 12 months earlier. A 35-25 defeat was not the finish that Scotland had envisaged to a promising tournament. However, unlike their opponents, Cotter’s side proved that they had come a long way in the previous 12 months.
