Ireland Comfortably In Front At Half-Time

Tries from Alan Quinlan, Girvan Dempsey, Denis Hickie, Marcus Horan and Eric Miller helped Ireland to a 33-7 interval lead against Namibia in Sydney today.

Played in atrocious conditions in front of a 41,000 capacity crowd Ireland opened the scoring after just three minutes when Quinlan scored following a good Ireland rolling maul. Dempsey was next to score when he took a pass from Brian O’Driscoll close to the line and then Hickie produced his own particular brand of magic to score in the corner in the 14th minutes.

Namibia were reduced to 14 when lock Heino Senekal was yellow carded in the 20th minute but Namibia survived that loss without conceding a score.

Within moments of being restored to 15 however, Namibia’s line was breached again. Paul O’Connell did splendidly to read a long line out throw and from his take Marcus Horan scored what looked a dubious try. O’Gara tagged on the points and Ireland had secured the bonus point.

Miller scored try number five but Namibia registered their first try of this RWC when Corne Powell crashed over under the Irish posts in the closing stages of the half.