Ireland 1 South Africa 0
Limerick Ireland 8 Sept 2009
South Africa will be disappointed that they didn’t make full use of the opportunity of playing a team slightly further down on the FIFA rankings compared to teams they have played against recently. Overall the teams were evenly matched although South Africa dominated the first half. However none of the chances they had were on target. A sublime penalty from Liam Lawrence that floated into the top left corner of the net gave Ireland the edge they needed to win the match.
The second half substitutions of Siphiwe Tshabalala for Bernard Parker and Leon Best for Kevin Doyle breathed new life into the match and both these subs had chances but failed to capitalize.
South Africa can take heart in the fact that Ireland recently drew against Italy in their World Cup Qualifying group.
Trapattoni and Santana made a number of substitutions in the second half, no doubt in an effort to test more options in advance of future games building up to the World Cup. Ireland is just below Italy in their World Cup group with only one game against Italy and one against Montenegro remaining.
