{"id":36687,"date":"2026-11-14T22:42:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-14T22:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/2026\/11\/14\/ireland-overcome-fiji-ahead-of-south-africa-showdown\/"},"modified":"2026-11-14T22:42:00","modified_gmt":"2026-11-14T22:42:00","slug":"ireland-overcome-fiji-ahead-of-south-africa-showdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/2026\/11\/14\/ireland-overcome-fiji-ahead-of-south-africa-showdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland overcome Fiji ahead of South Africa showdown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fiji went ahead briefly at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin before Ireland overhauled them to take a 43-15 victory in the Nations Championship; Ireland are now gearing up for a showdown with world champions South Africa next Saturday<br \/>\nIreland beat Fiji 43-15 in Dublin in the Nations Championship. The hosts had won all six previous Test matches between the sides but struggled for fluency and briefly trailed during an uncomfortable opening period at a subdued Aviva Stadium. Robert Baloucoune scored twice in the first half for Andy Farrell&#8217;s men after quick-fire tries from Fiji pair Josua Tuisova and Peceli Yato overhauled Tommy O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s early opener. Ronan Kelleher, Andrew Porter, O&#8217;Brien and Nick Timoney went over in the second half as Ireland eventually pulled clear to keep alive their hopes of reaching the Nations Championship final.<\/p>\n<p>Ireland are now gearing up for a showdown with world champions South Africa next weekend. The result over Fiji leaves Ireland level on 20 points with second-placed England in the northern hemisphere standings &#8211; a point below leaders France &#8211; ahead of next week&#8217;s mouthwatering clash with the Springboks. Ireland must now beat \u200bSouth Africa and hope France, who host Argentina, and England, who \u200btake on New Zealand, falter in Saturday&#8217;s matches to secure a place in the final at Twickenham on \u200cNovember 29.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fiji went ahead briefly at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin before Ireland overhauled them to take a 43-15 victory in the Nations Championship; Ireland are now gearing up for a showdown with world champions South\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36688,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}