Both squads were putting a reliance on local talent; the Irish had a large contingent of domestic players mixing it with their heritage professionals and the Russians, to their credit, had a squad solely comprised of domestic players.  The Irish side was largely unchanged from the previous week, flying wingers Alan McMahon and Casey Dunne (the poster boy for the game of Rugby League in Ireland) were looking to add to their impressive tries to games ratio.  Coach Mark Aston had gone with Scott Grix and Liam Finn to marshal the team around the pitch.

The Irish took the first set up well and kicked high, towards the full back and though he fumbled it went backwards.  The Russian then returned a good first set and forced the Irish to make the first error, which gave them good field position.  From this they worked close to the line and grubbered through for Vyascheslav Eramin to pounce upon.  The kick was converted by Alexsandr Lysokon to give a 6-0 lead after five minutes.

Great hands then put Casey Dunne in which Finn added a conversion to give the Irish a 12-6 lead after 11 minutes. The Irish then worked the ball left for Galway boy Alan McMahon to dive in to score in the corner.  Finn added the extras and Ireland now led by 18 to 6.

The first ten minutes of the second half saw a much better defence from the Russians as they tried to match the Irish by controlling the game speed but occasionally it slipped into penalty range and from one penalty the Irish worked the ball to Ollie Roberts and he burst through out right to score with Finn’s conversion drifting just wide of the posts.

Soon after Grix took the ball to the line and used his twinkle toes to dance through as the Russian defender chose the wrong option in the tackle. Finn converted and took the Irish to 54 points to 12 with a quarter to play. 

Again, the Irish came forward and with the Russians visibly tired they were conceding penalties and giving the Irish free rides up to the Russian goal line, but they were still trying.  From a broken down set play James Kelly took the ball and burst through the static defence to score a well-received try. 

Stuart Littler had his turn  in the 69th minute but missed his own conversion. 

The Russians had the final say, with a superb line run by Kalinin and a brilliant switch back to Vadim Buryak but with little consequence taking the score to 70 to 16 in favour of the home side Wolfhounds. 

Source: Rugby League European Federation