Ireland 63 Georgia 14
Ireland shook off the jetlag from last week's trip to Siberia by securing World Cup qualification with a comfortable victory over Georgia at Lansdowne Road this afternoon.
Eddie O'Sullivan's side took just 106 seconds to get their first try of the afternoon, when Denis Hickie finished off a well-worked set-piece move from a Shane Byrne lineout.
The throw went long and clean ball from Simon Easterby found scrum-half Peter Stringer, who wasted no time in feeding his back line.
Having passed through Brian O'Driscoll and Kevin Maggs' hands, the ball reached Hickie on the left touchline and the Leinster man rounded Georgian full-back Bessik Khamashuridze to touch down for his 14th international try.
O'Gara's conversion was successful and the fly-half followed it up with two well-taken penalties inside the first 11 minutes to give Ireland a 13-0 lead.
Kevin Maggs stretched that lead further in the 14th minute, having found the gap in the Georgian line following clever work from Ronan O'Gara. Maggs collected O'Gara's scissors pass and his angled run sent him over the line.
O'Gara kept up his 100 per cent record with the conversion and again followed up with another penalty to give Ireland a 23-0 lead after 21 minutes.
The Georgians, beaten 70-0 on their last visit to Lansdowne Road in 1998, were struggling to break out of their own half and four minutes later an attempted clearance kick from Khamashuridze was charged down by O'Driscoll, who picked up the ball in open space 10 metres out for the easiest of tries.
Again O'Gara converted but then lost his perfect kicking record with a missed 27th-minute penalty.
It mattered little in the context of the game however, as the Irish turned the screw a little tighter on Georgia.
It was O'Driscoll again who did the scoring after the Irish pack had sucked in the Georgian defence on the visitors' tryline.
Charges from John Hayes, Shane Byrne, Foley and Malcolm O'Kelly meant there was no-one left to stop O'Driscoll crossing the line when the ball found him out on the right wing. The Lions centre duly touched down and O'Gara's conversion pushed the score up to 37-0.
Full-back Girvan Dempsey got in on the act with a try in first-half injury-time and O'Gara's missed conversion saw the half close with Ireland in full control of the contest at 42-0 and with their place in next year's World Cup finals just 40 minutes from being confirmed.
The try-fest continued after the breaj thanks to more dreadful defending from the Georgians as Simon Easterby crashed over less than two minutes after the restart.
O'Gara's conversion sailed over to edge Ireland nearer to the half-century mark but there was a rude awakening when Georgia mounted their first attack in the 46th minute.
Vassil Katsadze, a half-time replacement at centre, found it all too easy to cut through the Irish defence to put Georgia's first points on the board and Badri Khekhelashvili converted from in front of the posts to pull the score back to 49-7.
As Irish momentum dropped, coach Eddie O'Sullivan chose the hour mark to replace O'Gara with David Humphreys and give the Ulsterman his 46th cap to equal Jack Kyle's record as most capped Irish fly-half.
The game may have been well won but Ireland's play dropped off dramatically and they let their visitors in all too easily again with 10 minutes to go.
Scrum-half Irakli Abusseridze caught the Irish defence napping with a quickly-taken tap penalty and passed to Khamashuridze on his shoulder who had a free run in under the posts.
Khekvelashvili converted again to push the score to 49-14. Ireland's discomfort was eased a little at the death as replacement back row Alan Quinlan and then Stringer's deputy Guy Easterby ran over for tries, both converted by Humphreys to close the game out on a scoring note at 63-14.
PA