\n<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\n
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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. But Australian confidence was further punctured by a fired-up Ireland, who immediately set about atoning for their sluggish start in last week’s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1304,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rugby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}