London Irish

FULL-TIME: Newport-Gwent Dragons 18 London Irish 12

By Alan Manicom
August 17, 2012

Brian Smith conceded that his London Irish side were below-par in their penultimate friendly before the Aviva Premiership gets under way in a fortnight.

Exiles were restricted to four penalties, one in the first half from Tom Homer and three after the break by Steve Shingler.

But Newport grabbed victory with tries from Steffan Jones and Adam Hughes and eight points from the boot of Tom Prydie.

Smith said: ""Our preparation has been brilliant this week.

"The positives are that we managed to get 25 blokes a hit-out and that was quite important.

"That possibly impacted on us a bit. We had 10 substitutes out in the last 20 minutes when we had three opportunities to score and win the game.

"But we were pretty ropey in that last 20 and that showed we need a little more time together with the subs.

"It is a bit of a kick in the tail. We could have played negative and kicked the last two goals to try to square it.

"I was quite keen for us to try to win it and see what our red-zone attack was like.

"We are not happy. Newport have done us a favour a little bit because we have seen where the leaks are.

"We can patch those up for next Friday because we will have to step up in class again when we go to Munster."

London Irish's director of rugby admitted that his side struggled to deal with the effects of a heavy pre-match downpour.

He said: "We took a while to adapt to the conditions.

"We came out with plenty of ambition. But in the first 20 minutes we did not treat field position with the respect we should have done.

"With the wet weather we probably needed to kick a bit longer then we did.

"At half-time we had a pretty big hill to climb, but we put ourselves in a position to win the game, which is a positive.

"But we didn't execute even though we had a tail breeze and a lot more field position, kicking downhill in the second half.

"We will be stronger against Munster."

Irish then kick off their Aviva Premiership campaign against Saracens in the London Double Header at Twickenham on September 1.

To see how tonight's match unfolded see below:

Were you at the game leave your comments below

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You guys played Dragons last night, not Newport. Newport are semi pro and would be a bit more of an embarrassing defeat for you.

With regards to the rain, it was hardly a surprise. I'm sure with Irish's delayed travel, they could have adapted before kick off, plus it was forecasted all week.

Your two Welsh (well one half Welsh, half Scottish) halfbacks made a difference. Both sides made changes though and Dragons went off the boil after their second try, which also helped. Still a friendly result means jack. Good hit out for both teams and I wish you all the best for your season