Sport

Duffy shines as players warm up for tour

Colours 50 Whites 26 Ireland jet off to tour Australia, Tonga and Samoa next Friday without any major worries

Sat May 24 2003 - 01:00

Colours 50 Whites 26 Ireland jet off to tour Australia, Tonga and Samoa next Friday without any major worries. Reggie Corrigan retired early with an injury but he is expected to make the trip.

Last night's trial game in Limerick saw 12 tries scored, eight by the winners. Gavin Duffy was top try-scorer with three spectacular touchdowns for the Colours, who fell behind early on but led 19-5 at the interval.

For two of his tries Duffy made breaks from near halfway and his speed was a constant threat to the rather suspect Whites defence.

Ireland coach Eddie O'Sullivan said: "It was a very useful workout. There were a lot of handling errors and clearly my squad badly needed a game as we haven't played much rugby recently."

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Justin Fitzpatrick began at prop for the Colours, was replaced on the hour by Marcus Horan, but then was forced into action for the Whites when Emmet Byrne was sin-binned and Fitzpatrick was the only prop available.

Mike Mullins and Ronan O'Gara also impressed for the winners, while Victor Costello was outstanding.

Tyrone Howe was best of the Whites' backs and scored two tries, while Barry Everitt, introduced on the hour for Girvan Dempsey, also did well and landed three conversions from as many attempts. Gary Longwell and Paul O'Connell did well in the second row but generally the forward exchanges were tame.

COLOURS: P Wallace (try); J Topping, G Duffy (three tries), M Mullins (try), A Horgan; R O'Gara (five cons), B O'Meara; J Fitzpatrick, S Byrne, S Best, L Cullen, M O'Kelly, A Quinlan, K Gleeson (try), V Costello (try). Replacements: M Lawlor (try) for Horgan, M Horan for Fitzpatrick, D O'Callaghan for O'Kelly, J Fogarty for Byrne, D Leamy for Gleeson, B Cunningham for Lawlor,

WHITES: G Dempsey; T Robinson, J Kelly, D Quinlan, T Howe (two tries); M McHugh, E Reddan; R Corrigan, P Shields, E Byrne, G Longwell, P O'Connell, D Wallace, K Dawson (try), E Millar. Replacements: K Campbell (try) for Reddan, M Cahill for Corrigan, B Jackman for Shields, T Hogan for Longwell, B Everitt (three cons) for Dempsey.