HT at #RWCKobe @IrishRugby hold a comfortable lead over @russiarugby and will chase the BP in the second half #IREvRUS #RWC2019 pic.twitter.com/Xxl1EBeIKj — Rugby World Cup (@rugbyworldcup) October 3, 2019 Sexton was withdrawn at the break, with Jack Carty coming on to replace the captain. Ireland continued to make unforced errors in the early stages of the second half, squandering some promising attacks. Russia then lost replacement lock Andrey Ostrikov to a yellow card in the 51st minute for a challenge on John Ryan which could have resulted in a red on another occasion. Ireland finally secured their bonus point in the 62nd minute. Carty's probing high kick was caught by Keith Earls, who offloaded to the onrushing Andrew Conway. Conway showed great pace to sprint clear of the covering Russian backs and touch down Ireland's fourth try. Carty tapped over the conversion to make it 28-0. Jordan Larmour added a fifth try five minutes from time after a strong run from Jordan Larmour, and saw a second try ruled out for a knock on in the dying minutes of the game.
"...we needed the support tonight to take confidence..."@IrishRugby head coach Joe Schmidt praises the Irish fans for giving his players a needed confidence boost as they beat Russia at #RWC2019#IREvRUS pic.twitter.com/sALA2wQSCk — Rugby World Cup (@rugbyworldcup) October 3, 2019 While Ireland got the job done, the flat nature of the performance will do little to give New Zealand or South Africa restless nights ahead of the quarter-finals. Ireland will need to improve in a lot of areas if they are to reach the last four. They conceded 22 turnovers in total against their European opponents, who are the lowest ranked team in the tournament and who played 20 of the 80 minutes with 14 men. Next up is Samoa on October 12th. Ireland: R Kearney (J Larmour 50); A Conway, G Ringrose, B Aki, K Earls; J Sexton (J Carty h-t), L McGrath; D Kilcoyne (A Porter 58), N Scannell (S Cronin 58), John Ryan (T Furlong 58); T Beirne, J Kleyn (I Henderson 61); R Ruddock, P O’Mahony, J Murphy (CJ Stander 28). Russia: V Artemyev (capt); G Davydov, I Galinovskiy, K Golosnitskiy (K Golosnitskiy 14), D Simlikevich (R Khodin 71); R Gaisin, D Perov; A Polivalov, E Matveev (S Selskii 71), K Gotovtsev (V Podrezov 68); A Garbuzov (A Ostrikov 51), B Fedotko; A Sychev, T Gadzhiev, V Gresev.