Richards inspires Irish World Cup boilover

Inspired by a record-breaking performance from winger Pat Richards, Ireland caused a major boilover at the rugby league World Cup with a 34-16 win over Samoa to advance to a semi-final qualifier.

Needing to win by five points to finish top of the pool, underdogs Ireland unbelievably bolted to a 14-0 lead at Parramatta Stadium, despite taking a defensive pummeling in the first 10 minutes.

Samoa got back to within two points late in the first half before Ireland scored the next 16 points to blow the Pacific island side out of the water.

Richards haul of 22 points from three tries and five goals was the most in a World Cup match for Ireland, eclipsing Steve Prescott’s bag of 14 against Samoa eight years ago.

It could have been an even bigger night for the former Wests Tigers premiership winner who missed with five of his ten kicks at goal.

But that was about all that went right for Samoa, who won their opening game against Tonga to favourites to make it out of pool 3.

Instead they finished bottom of the pool courtesy of points differential.

Samoa pounded the Ireland line for the first ten minutes, but had two potential tries to skipper and five-eighth Nigel Vagana and hooker Terrence Seuseu rubbed out by video referee Steve Ganson.

Trailing 22-12 midway through the second half, they lost talisman Vagana to injury and then had forward David Solomona placed on report by the French referee for elbowing centre Sean Gleeson.

After surviving the early onslaught, Ireland piled on three tries in seven minutes with Richards using his 23cm height advantage to leap over for the first over opposing winger Matt Utai before four-pointers to lock Simon Finnigan and centre Sean Gleeson.

Shellshocked Samoa hit back with Vagana capitalising on a spilt ball by Ireland fullback Michael Platt before Misi Taulapapa burrowed over from dummy half.

Richards scored his second try three minutes into the second half when he cut inside and beat three defenders, the two sides then trading tries before the hulking winger completed his hat-trick inside the last two minutes.

Ireland coach Andy Kelly was proud of his team’s performance, though he felt they still had room for improvement.

“I think we learnt the lesson from the Tongan game and tonight we came out a little bit stronger and a little bit wiser,” Kelly said.

“It was a smashing effort.”

Richards, a former Parramatta Junior, who was back on his old home ground, relished the opportunity to be part of Ireland’s World Cup journey, but stressed it was a different experience to the Tiger’s premiership-winning run.

“It is a totally different competition, I’ve never played for Ireland before, but I’m really enjoying it,” Richards said.

“Being part of the squad is very special. We’re very tight knit and that helped.”

Samoa coach John Ackland said while the short five-day turnaround for his team after the much-anticipated clash with Tonga could have been a factor, they had known about that prior to the tournament.

He rued the series of lost scoring opportunities, but paid generous credit to Ireland’s gritty defence.

“They defended their tryline terrific, three or four last-ditch tackles, full credit to them,” Ackland said.

“We got into their 20 and we had numbers and didn’t take advantage,” he said.

Ackland said Vagana was feeling “pretty sore” after being helped off the ground.

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