Ireland beat Fiji 43-15 at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin on Saturday, a fourth win in five Nations Championship games that keeps Andy Farrell’s side in a three-way fight for top spot in the European pool with one round left.
The result leaves Ireland on 20 points, level with England and one behind leaders France. For Fiji, it was a fifth defeat in five, and the Pacific islanders remain the only side in the 12-team competition still without a point.
A yellow card each, and a familiar Australian referee
Australian Angus Gardner refereed the game, with Mike Adamson as the video official. Both teams spent time a player short: Ireland’s Tadhg Beirne and Fiji’s Inoke Ravuiwasa were each shown a yellow card, which in rugby union sends a player to the sideline for a spell, similar to a penalty box in hockey.
How Ireland’s season adds up
The Nations Championship is a new competition this year. It puts the six European teams in one pool and the southern hemisphere powers plus Fiji and Japan in the other, and each team plays every side in the opposite pool once. Ireland’s run so far:
- July: beat Australia 33-31 in Sydney, beat Japan 36-20 in Newcastle, Australia, lost 40-21 to New Zealand in Auckland.
- November: beat Argentina 42-12 in Dublin, beat Fiji 43-15 in Dublin.
Add the scores and Ireland have 175 points for and 118 against, a difference of plus-57. That is the smallest margin of the three contenders: England sit on plus-134 and France on plus-80. If points end up level after the final round, the margin could matter, so Ireland need a big final performance as well as a win.
Fullback Hugo Keenan has five tries in the competition, joint second on the scoring chart behind New Zealand’s Will Jordan, who has six.
Fiji’s hard road
Fiji’s numbers explain their season. They have scored 81 points and conceded 242 in five games, with losses to Wales, England, Scotland, France and now Ireland. They also never played a true home game. Their national stadium in Fiji is far short of the 25,000-seat minimum the competition requires, so their three “home” fixtures were moved to Cardiff, Liverpool and Edinburgh.
For American readers, this is rugby union, the 15-a-side code. It is the same sport in which Wales just ended a 73-year wait with a 35-28 win over New Zealand in Cardiff, one of the biggest results of the same round. England’s 78-15 win over Japan the same afternoon is part of the race too, and more from the weekend sits on the Badiyaa sports page.
What comes next
Ireland host South Africa, second in the southern pool, at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday, November 21, with kickoff at 4:40 p.m. local time (11:40 a.m. Eastern). England face New Zealand and France play Argentina the same day. The winner of each pool meets in the final at Twickenham in London on November 29, while Fiji go to Udine to play Italy, the only other team in the competition yet to win a game.
Further reading
Image: William Murphy, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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