Ireland snatched a 33-31 victory over Australia in the Nations Championship test in Sydney on Saturday, with Wallabies flyhalf Ben Donaldson missing a long-range penalty after the siren.<\/p>\n
Thomas Clarkson levelled the match at 31-31 with a late try and flyhalf Sam Prendergast\u2019s conversion nudged the Irish ahead three minutes from time at Sydney Football Stadium.<\/p>\n
The Wallabies fought hard to win possession and earn a penalty at the death but Donaldson\u2019s 50-metre kick from the right touch-line sailed wide.<\/p>\n
Ireland notched a sixth successive win over the Wallabies, though the hosts were much-improved compared to their 46-19 hiding by the Irish in Dublin last November.<\/p>\n
\u201cGod, it was so tight, so intense, a proper test match,\u201d said Ireland fullback Hugo Keenan.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut to be fair to the lads, we asked to make this crowd, these thousands in green, proud and that\u2019s exactly what we did.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe never gave up, we dug in deep and at the end of the day it just came down to a kick.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, hard luck to Australia. They were very unlucky. It could have gone either way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hours after New Zealand won a nine-try thriller against France in Christchurch, Australia and Ireland had six tries between them by the 26th minute.<\/p>\n
The Wallabies led twice early through tries to outside backs Dylan Pietsch and Jock Campbell but were pegged back by Cian Prendergast and Josh van der Flier\u2019s five-pointers.<\/p>\n
The Wallabies surged again, with lock Josh Canham diving over from a ruck and Max Jorgensen setting up Ryan Lonergan\u2019s 26th-minute try with a brilliant interception and dash down the touch-line.<\/p>\n
Tries either side of halftime to scrumhalf Jamison Gibson-Park and Keenan nudged Ireland in front before Tate McDermott snatched back the lead after taking a quick tap near the line and burrowing over through a forest of Irish legs.<\/p>\n
Ireland hooker Dan Sheehan nearly made it a seventh lead change when he thundered over from a line-out drive but the try was chalked off due to obstruction in the buildup.<\/p>\n
Ireland\u2019s forwards kept bashing away at the try-line and were finally rewarded when Australia went a man down for repeated offside penalties, with Lachlan Shaw given a yellow card.<\/p>\n
That opened the door for Clarkson to barge over from a ruck as the Irish condemned the Wallabies to a fifth consecutive defeat after their winless tour of Europe in November.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn patches we were really good. We had plenty of opportunities, we just weren\u2019t good enough at the end of the day,\u201d said Wallabies scrumhalf Tate McDermott.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":38803,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-38802","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"The Wallabies surged again, with lock Josh Canham diving over from a ruck.","published_date":"","news_description":"The Wallabies surged again, with lock Josh Canham diving over from a ruck.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38827,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38802\/revisions\/38827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=38802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}