JOE SCHMIDT CALLED it a ‘corker’, but Tiernan O’Halloran knows Finlay Bealham too well to offer much in the way of a compliment for the offload that opened the door for the fullback’s first-half try.
The Connacht tighthead drive into contact 30 metres from the try-line, and twisted his body to offer up a beautifully fluid pass right into the palms of O’Halloran.
The Galway man hit the ball at full pelt on a scything angle and powered clean through the defensive line on his way to the left corner.
“Finlay tries those offloads a lot in training. So I read that one off him,” O’Halloran said after his two-try performance in the win over Canada.
“I’ll be hearing about it for a while I’d say. I’ll be getting video clips in the week from him, boasting about it.”
Bealham and O’Halloran both have good grounds to boast about their efforts in the 52 – 21 win over Canada. Bealham continually rocked red jerseys backwards with big hits and formed part of an impressive scrum effort.
After winning his first two caps with just a handful of minutes (largely down to injury in the third Test) in South Africa, tonight was a much better example of the quality threat O’Halloran provides for his province and, now, Ireland.
It was far from a perfect performance from the team as a whole as the 18th-ranked nation were allowed to score three times, including two back-to-back scored to pull level at 14 apiece before Bealham’s big try assist. But that sort of competition is not necessarily a bad thing in the long run as O’Halloran points out.
“It’s going to benefit us. You wouldn’t really get much out of going and putting 60-70 on a team and them not scoring tries or testing you.
“There were a few times tonight when we might have had system errors or things like that, so it was good to have those tests. Hopefully we’ll learn from them and it’ll make us better players.”
There are bigger, tougher Tests ahead, but offloads and finishes like the try Bealham and O’Halloran conjured tonight are always welcome.
The42 is on Snapchat! Tap the button below on your phone to add!
