'FINGERS CROSSED' - IRELAND'S BEIRNE TO FACE DISCIPLINARY HEARING TONIGHT

IRELAND SECOND ROW Tadhg Beirne will face a disciplinary hearing this evening after being red-carded in the defeat to New Zealand last weekend, but the Irish set-up are hopeful he will be free to play against Japan this Saturday.

Beirne was on the receiving end of a 20-minute red card during Ireland’s 26-13 loss in Chicago.

Referee Pierre Brousset initially showed Beirne a yellow card and sent the incident for an off-field review, with foul play review officer Dan Jones then upgrading the sanction to a 20-minute red.

Ireland assistant coach Johnny Sexton has confirmed that Beirne will face a disciplinary hearing this evening.

“I haven’t been in too many disciplinary hearings myself over the years,” said Ireland Sexton today, “but the way I see it, we’ll let it unfold tonight.

“But if you look at it in real time, it looks very different to how it looked when you slow things down.

“So we’re hoping that we get a good outcome, but you just don’t know what these things.

“But we’re fingers crossed that he’ll be available for selection, yeah.”

Ireland are expected to make several changes to their starting XV for this weekend’s clash with Eddie Jones’ Japan in Dublin.

Sexton indicated that there will be a combination of players being retained after the New Zealand game, others being dropped due to underperforming, and another group of players who get chances to impress with the 2027 World Cup now in view.

“It’s a bit of giving guys a chance, for sure,” said Sexton.

“Some of it will be selection, guys will get a chance because others didn’t play that well at the weekend.

“So it’s always a mixture, isn’t it? We need to make sure we pick a team that goes out, first of all, and tries to win the game. It’s a really important game for us, as all these games are, with regards to rankings and with the World Cup draw coming up.

“So picking a team to win, first and foremost, but at the same time, Andy knows that in two years’ time, we’re going to a World Cup and we need to have 40 players ready to go.”

Sexton said Ireland are eager to get back on the pitch this weekend, having had an honest review of their performance against New Zealand last weekend.

It wasn’t the kind of display they had been chasing in their opening autumn game.

“It’s a pretty disappointed camp,” said Sexton. “We feel we probably prepared really well over the last two weeks and we didn’t get it out there on Saturday, which is the most disappointing thing.

“There’s nothing worse than when you prepare properly and you have a good plan and you just don’t quite execute it.

“The players have been pretty open and honest, and coaches too, and come in and discussed it over the last couple of days and figured out why because that’s the most important thing, we’ve got to take the learnings from it and make sure that it doesn’t happen again.”

The message from the Ireland coaches today has been about moving on after their review.

“It’s trying to turn the page really, taking the lessons,” said Sexton. “Andy’s always very good at that when you’re in the environment, he always reframes things, we move on pretty quick, but he also keeps us accountable and makes us realise that it wasn’t good enough.

“And sometimes it can happen like that and we understand that.

“And sometimes you can put it down to prep or do guys take their eye off the ball a bit, but it just didn’t go to plan on the day and we’ve got some good reasons for that now and we’ll make sure that it doesn’t happen again.”

2025-11-04T14:50:20Z