U18s go down to Italy

The Ireland U18 side lost their opening game of the FIRA/AER tournament in Trevisio against a strong Italian team.

As with most Italian teams, the pack were big and aggressive and put the Ireland team under a huge amount of pressure in the opening quarter.

Cheered on by a large local vociferous crowd, the Italians scored a try after 13 minutes, which they failed to convert.

Following the rough opening, Ireland came back into the game and started to make inroads into the Italian half. After a period of sustained pressure, scrumhalf Chris Green broke from a ruck and scored a try to level afffairs. The conversion was missed, leaving the score 5-5 at half time.

The second half mirrored the first, with Italy piling on pressure through their heavy forwards, but again Ireland defended resoultuely.

With so much defending, it was inevitable that Italy would eventually find a way through and they scored two late tries in the last 10 minutes, both of which were converted to leave the final score 24-5 to Italy.

Ireland will play their second game against Portugal on Wednesday (April 12th) in the San Dona Piave grounds at 8.00pm (local time)