Saturday’s game presented an opportunity for both sides to deliver a much-needed statement performance, with the wounded Wallabies chasing a first win in Dublin since 2013 after bruising defeats by England and Italy.<\/p>\n
But Australian confidence was further punctured by a fired-up Ireland, who immediately set about atoning for their sluggish start in last week’s uninspiring win over Japan with renewed intent and aggression.<\/p>\n
After the Japan game, Farrell told his players to “get over themselves” and, led by the irrepressible Hansen, they took his words to heart.<\/p>\n
Having already claimed his first high ball with ease, Hansen finished a couple of sharp Irish attacks under the posts, the first coming after neat offloads from Sam Prendergast and Stuart McCloskey, whose game was ended prematurely by a recurrence of a groin injury.<\/p>\n
Prendergast, restored at fly-half ahead of Jack Crowley, was the chief architect of the second, his quickly-taken kick to the corner forcing a knock-on from the retreating Max Jorgensen as the full-back tried to prevent a 50:22.<\/p>\n
From there, Ireland quickly worked the ball to Hansen for his second.<\/p>\n
With 28 minutes on the clock, he had his hat-trick when he darted through a gap in the Wallabies defence after Tommy O’Brien did well to claim a Prendergast kick under pressure from Jorgensen.<\/p>\n
Hansen’s second and third tries came either side of Australia’s opener, scored by returning centre Ikitau, who made a spell of sustained Wallaby pressure count when he barged past Prendergast under the posts.<\/p>\n
While Ireland looked slick in attack, they continued to concede penalties, and after Tadhg Beirne was pinged for offside, Australia – playing their 14th Test this year – narrowed the deficit to five with the last play of the half when impressive back row McReight crossed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saturday’s game presented an opportunity for both sides to deliver a much-needed statement performance, with the wounded Wallabies…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572986,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-573415","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115557527883892194","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}