O’Sullivan admits Wallabies are on different level

Australia 45

Ireland coach, Eddie O’Sullivan believes that Australia are on a different level at the moment and it certainly looked that way for the majority of the second half as the Wallabies captain and man of the match George Gregan inspired his colleagues to a facile victory.

Australia ran in six tries (one of them a penalty try after John Kelly was adjudged to have tripped Elton Flatley in a race for the ball) over the course of an efficient evening’s work in front of a crowd of 39,787.

Ireland’s cause wasn’t helped by the sin-binning of Girvan Dempsey in the 53rd minute for killing the ball under his own posts and Australia made the most of the extra space to tack on three tries, giving the scoreboard a slightly unfair reflection. Stand-off Elton Flatley also contributed 20 points.

“I’m not disheartened,” O’Sullivan insisted. “We’re on a tour with a slightly weakened squad, we’re at the end of our season and they were quite physical with us early on and put us under a lot of pressure. That’s something we have to face up to at the World Cup and they are the world champions.

“We all realise they’re on a different level and when you’re number six in the world there’s a big gap to number five and we’re trying to bridge that gap.

“If everything goes right on the day you have a chance of bridging it but when things go wrong they can go badly wrong. That’s still the reality of world rugby as far as we’re concerned.”

Saturday’s match changed utterly after the half-time break as Australia’s powerful runners eventually began to find holes in an over-stretched Irish defence.

“Some of it came down to the fact that we shipped so much punishment in the first half and that left us a little leaden-legged in the second half,” reflected O’Sullivan yesterday.

David Giffin and Toutai Kefu probed relentlessly all through as did centres Morgan Turinui and Steve Kefu and it was the latter who slipped in for a well-worked try on 53 minutes which opened the floodgates.

Ireland had been clinging to Australia’s coat-tails during the first half and trailed at the break by just one point, (14-13).

But an early second half penalty from the impressive Flatley allied to Kefu’s try was the beginning of the end for the visitors.

“I felt at half-time that we’d absorbed a lot of pressure; a lot of it through our own making by not being clinical in our own half. Our line-out wasn’t firing well either and we kept ourselves under pressure.

“The second half sin-binning really killed us off. They outscored us 17-3 in that period and then after the penalty try there was no way back.

“We’ve two more Tests to play and hopefully two more Tests to win,” added O’Sullivan.

“It’s a great opportunity for some of the players who haven’t been front-lining all year to make a bid for the World Cup squad. It’s also a chance for young players to get some experience on tour and we want to win the two games.”

Apart from David Humphreys (who flew home to Ireland yesterday) Marcus Horan was the only other player to pick up a knock on Saturday night.

AUSTRALIA: C Latham; W Sailor; M Turinui, S Kefu, J Roff; E Flatley, G Gregan; B Young, J Paul, P Noriega; N Sharpe, D Giffin, D Lyons, G Smith, T Kefu. Replacements: B Darwin, B Cannon, D Vickerman, P Waugh, C Whitaker, N Grey, L Tuquri.

IRELAND: G Dempsey; J Topping; G Murphy, K Maggs, J Kelly; D Humphreys, P Stringer; M Horan, S Byrne, R Corrigan; M O’Kelly, G Longwell; A Quinlan, K Gleeson, V Costello. Replacements: P Shields, E Byrne, P O’Connell, E Miller, G Easterby, R O’Gara, T Howe.

Referee: Nigel Williams (Wales