England ended their Rugby World Cup 2015 warm-ups on a positive note with a 21-13 victory over Ireland at Twickenham on Saturday. Catch up on all the highlights, watch the full match and get feedback from the players, two weeks out from RWC kickoff.
Wingers Jonny May and Anthony Watson scored early as England took advantage of poor Ireland defending, to head into a 12-3 lead at the break. The hosts will take great heart from this performance at home, that also included two disallowed tries.
“When we play at home, we can be pretty good when we stick to our systems,” said England captain Chris Robshaw. “We put Ireland under pressure today and it was a great dress rehearsal before the big one in two weeks’ time.
“Today we did exactly what we said we wanted to do. We tried to exploit the areas where we thought there were chances and fixed up some of the problems which didn’t work as well for us last week.”
After being on a high and reaching a second on the table world ranking ahead of the tournament, Ireland have now lost two successive matches to Six Nations rivals, despite them being fairly close affairs.
“We started poorly, we kept dropping the ball, and you cannot accumulate those sorts of losses and expect to do well,” said skipper Paul O’Connell. “Alarm bells are not ringing but we are very disappointed. We have fallen short of a lot of things we want to do.”
England coach Stuart Lancaster was pleased with his back three, particularly Jonny May.
“I thought Jonny was excellent. Not just with his aerial skills. Ireland are so smart in their kicking game but sometimes he was up and sometimes he was back. They rarely found grass in the backfield because Jonny, Anthony and Browny had done their homework.
“Jonny showed attacking intent but also physicality to score. Jonny put his hand up but he’s been putting his hand up throughout this pre-season camp,” he said.
Highlights wrap below, O2 Inside Line’s wrap on page two, and the full match on page three
credit: rugby channel
O2 Inside Line host Ugo Monye wraps up the game. He is joined by Danny Care, Mike Brown, Anthony Watson, Ben Youngs and Jamie George in reviewing all the action.
Watch the full England vs Ireland match from Twickenham in HD
[credit to cappers/uploaders]
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