By Padraic Halpin DUBLIN (Reuters) – A sloppy Ireland put a poor first period behind them on Saturday to emerge 28-17 winners over Argentina in an unconvincing warm-up to next week’s meeting of the world’s top two teams when New Zealand visit Dublin. Ireland were fortunate to edge an error-strewn first 40 minutes by the home side and trailed early in the second period before finding some much-needed composure to pull away from the dangerous Pumas in the final quarter. “A lot of things we can do better out there. We have to move on but we’ll take that result. We had to dig really deep,” man-of-the-match James Ryan said in a pitchside interview. The home side’s day, however, was marred by the news that flanker Sean O’Brien, forced off through injury, had broken his arm. Nicolas Sanchez opened the scoring early on with a fine long-range penalty, something his opposite number Johnny Sexton would turn down throughout the half to offer his superior pack as many drives for the line as possible. Held up on their first raid, Ireland destroyed the visitors’ front five in the resulting scrum as number nine Kieran Marmion sniped over for the opening try. A missed conversion from Sexton allowed Sanchez to restore the advantage two minutes later. Ireland had lost Robbie Henshaw to an injury in the warm-up and Argentina took advantage of their hosts’ re-jigged centre partnership when Matias Orlando ghosted through midway through the half to set up Bautista Delguy for… [Read full story]
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