O’Connell keen to see Ireland improve

Joe Schmidt’s men beat Canada by 50-7 at the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff.

Centre Robbie Henshaw is not quite fit, but Schmidt is aiming most of his big guns at the underdogs: the full-back Rob Kearney, the half-backs Jonathan Sexton and Conor Murray, the lock Paul O’Connell, the familiar back-row trio of Peter O’Mahony, Sean O’Brien and Jamie Heaslip.

But the infringement was clear – as was Ireland’s superiority, aside from a short spell at the start of the second half when it was forced to weather a number of phases on its try-line.

The last two encounters between Canada and Ireland have been in Vancouver (2009) and Toronto (2013).

Van der Merwe capped an impressive display with a breakaway try to add some credibility to the scoreline, and then revealed that Canada will be throwing everything they have at Italy in their next fixture as they bid to qualify for the quarter-finals for the second time in their history.

Canada coach Kieran Crowley, however, said his side had their eyes only on a win on Saturday and Cudmore agreed they had the quality to hold their own against the Irish. But Ireland’s defence managed to nullify that Canadian pressure and for the time they were shorthanded, Ireland took the play to Canada.

Three more tries through Sean Cronin, David Kearney and Jared Payne to complete the demolition in the second half. The try was converted by fly-half Nathan Hirayama from the University of Victoria Vikes.

Canada threatened again, but Ireland forced a turnover and raced the length, Keith Earls outpacing John Moonlight before floating a fine scoring pass to Rob Kearney. A late surge for another try ended with a pass out of bounds.

Canada have qualified for every World Cup and they showed they weren’t going to be overawed by the experience with Matt Evans’ offload the fulcrum of an enterprising early move for the Canucks.

“There’s only so many ways you can play the game but what we did was play really well three-dimensionally”, head coach Schmidt said.

“He has good game management, and always creates a threat because he has a kicking threat and a running threat”.

“We need to have people that we can put out there who can do the job, and we have confidence in our full squad of 31″.

“We got it scanned, there’s a bit of blood there”. You couldn’t know who they were cheering for because we weren’t playing in Dublin. “I thought our passing game was pretty good”.

With 10 minutes remaining, the noise level inside Brighton’s compact stadium was deafening as Japan’s screaming red-and-white army of fans sensed a sensational result might actually happen when fullback Ayumu Goromaru screeched over into the right corner to make it 29-29.

When you consider the bruising encounter that France and Italy have just gone through and the injuries that they’ve picked up, Ireland will be mighty relieved to still have 31 lads standing.