Ireland 50 Canada 7 – #RWC2015 Facts & Figures
We take a look at some of the key facts and figures from Ireland’s 50-7 bonus point victory over Canada in Pool D of Rugby World Cup 2015.
– Ireland won their opening match in a World Cup campaign for the fifth World Cup in a row
– Ireland improved to 14 wins and zero defeats facing non-Tier 1 nations in World Cup matches
– Paul O’Connell made his fourth career World Cup participation, matching the Ireland record held by Brian O’Driscoll
– Canada’s Jamie Cudmore received his sixth career yellow card in a Test match. This is one shy of the world record of seven by Italy’s Marco Bortolami
– Sean O’Brien touched down. He also crossed over against Russia at RWC 2011
– The first penalty goal by Jonathan Sexton in this match took his career Test total to 502 points (for Ireland and the British & Irish Lions). Sexton is now one of seven players at RWC 2015 with 500-plus career Test points. He finished the day on 508 career points
– Sexton is between 500-600, five other players are in the 600-700 range and Daniel Carter of the All Blacks is in the 1,500-1,600 range
– Before today, every Ireland jersey from 1 to 15 had scored a RWC try, except 4 and 10. Within minutes, Iain Henderson (4) and Jonathan Sexton (10) completed the set for Ireland
– Paul O’Connell was the fifth captain to be sin-binned in a World Cup match following Colin Charvis (Wales, 2003), Marco Bortolami (Italy, 2007), Raphaël Ibañez (France, 2007) and Jamie Cudmore (Canda, 2015)
– This was the first World Cup match in which both captains were sin-binned
– DTH van der Merwe put Canada on the board with a try and has now scored in three successive World Cups (2007, 2011 and 2015). Al Charron was the only other Canadian who had registered tries in three different World Cups
– For the first time brothers Rob and Dave Kearney scored tries in the same Test match. Other brothers to do so in a RWC match include Scott and Gavin Hastings (Scotland) and Rory and Tony Underwood (England)