Munster scorers!

By Gary Watton
August 9 2015

The World Cup warm-up fixtures in August could easily be dismissed as glorified training sessions, but the Irish camp can take many positives from their five-try demolition of a Wales XV in Cardiff. Of course neither coaches fielded their full-strength teams, so the result is not suggesting that Ireland are (far) superior to Wales. Instead, the trouncing was merely a reminder that the Oirish appear to have more strength in depth, and therefore an Ireland XV, consisting of many fringe players can reasonably be expected to overcome a Wales equivalent.

Perhaps what is most pleasing for the visitors is that they have never enjoyed terribly inspirational pre-World Cup warm-up campaigns, and lo and behold the mediocrity has then frequently followed the squad into the subsequent tournament. However, even allowing for the fact that Joe Schmidt is sure to be selecting a few experimental line-ups, the feelgood factor arising from two or three wins in August can easily create much-needed momentum in the autumn.

Presumably Wales will be a different beast when the two neighbours lock horns again later in the month, but they can breathe a sigh of relief that they actually limited the damage that had been inflicted. Up until the last fifteen minutes, the hosts were trailing by the embarrassing score of 35-7, before two late tries by Tipuric and then Cuthbert, each of which was converted, went some way to providing pain relief. In fact, were it not for three missed conversions by the away team, then the humiliation would be greater still. Ireland will hope for further tries bonanzas against Scotland, England and Wales again in the next few weeks, but the coaches will all stress, quite understandably, that providing valuable game time is much more important than the actual result. Still I shall contend that winning can become a habit and losing can equally become an unwelcome addiction, so the 'win' in Cardiff is a good boost to squad morale.

Wales 21 IRELAND 35; at Cardiff; Saturday the eighth of August 2015.

15 Jones (TRY)

14 Trimble [replaced by Zebo (TRY)]

13 Earls (TRY)

12 Cave (TRY)

11 McFadden

10 Jackson (two penalties, two conversions)

9 Reddan

8 Heaslip [captain] (TRY)

7 O'Donnell

6 Murphy

5 Ryan

4 Henderson

3 Ross

2 Strauss

1 McGrath

Used replacements: Zebo, Tuohy, Kilcoyne, Henry, Bent, Best, Madigan, Marmion.