Ex-Ireland star slams ‘garbage’ law as Simon Easterby’s side get ‘very lucky’ with ‘out of control’ Garry Ringrose

Former Ireland back Luke Fitzgerald has hit out at the 20-minute red card after Garry Ringrose was sent off in their Six Nations victory over Wales.

The centre was initially sin-binned following a head-on-head collision with Ben Thomas before that was upgraded following a review.

Due to the new laws being trialled in the Six Nations, Ireland were only down to 14 men for 20 minutes.

During that period, they conceded two tries – to Jac Morgan and Tom Rogers – before Bundee Aki came on to inspire a turnaround.

Replacement for Ringrose

Aki was effectively a replacement for Ringrose and the 34-year-old played a key role in helping the visitors recover from a 18-10 deficit and earn a 27-18 triumph.

“20-minute red card is garbage – Ireland very lucky,” Fitzgerald wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Out of control coming into the contact area as is evident from the feet (gets him massive contacts but why he misses a lot & gets himself in bad positions).

“Massive GR fan, but I’ve been banging on about this for ages – Irl lucky.”

Providing the red card is upheld at the subsequent disciplinary hearing, Ringrose is likely to miss the rest of the Six Nations.

“Those can go either way,” Ireland interim head coach Simon Easterby said.

“Ringer is a great player for us, everything he does is with intent, in terms of the speed he works at. That’s probably what cost him there, the speed of his movement off the line and he just doesn’t quite drop enough.

“He’s certainly far from a dirty player, it’s just one of those things, it could have gone either way. It could have been a yellow. There was another incident late in the game that could have gone either way.

“It didn’t fall in our favour, these things happen. I was pleased with how the lads responded to that, even though we conceded at the end of the first half we found our way back into the game when we were down a man and Bundee coming on made a huge impact.”

Wales v Ireland: Garry Ringrose’s red card splits opinion as great calls for a ‘big ban’

Ireland improvement needed

Ireland secured the Triple Crown and moved another step towards the Grand Slam by overcoming Wales, but it was not their finest performance.

They were put under significant pressure by the Welsh, who played their first game since Warren Gatland stepped down as head coach after 14 straight defeats.

“I am pleased with the result but there are lots of things in the game that we feel we could have done better,” Easterby added.

“We go down in the game, we go down a man and then we go down on the scoreboard. We came in at half-time and felt like if we played in the right way and did things better our way then we felt we could dominate them.

“We had a lot of possession and territory for 30 minutes and just didn’t quite get our accuracy right in terms of scoring the points that we needed.

“We know that Wales would come back into it if we gave them an opportunity and we did that. I was pleased that we responded to being in a bit of a hole and we dug ourselves out and took the game away from them in the last 20.”

READ MORE: Wales v Ireland: Five takeaways as Warren Gatland ‘proven wrong’ as Irish clinch Triple Crown