- Ireland <46.5 points (5/6 Paddy Power)
Georgia are 80 minutes away from becoming the highest ranked team to fail to score in three consecutive matches in the professional era.
Of the established rugby-playing nations, Scotland were the last team to suffer this fate, drawing a blank against France, New Zealand and Ireland between January and February in 1954.
Georgia went into the Autumn Nations Cup looking to develop their attacking game but there have been few signs of that coming to fruition in the 40-0 and 18-0 defeats to England and Wales respectively.
Visits to the opposition 22 have been extremely rare and fly-half Tedo Abzhandadze has incredibly only had one shot at goal – a skewed effort on the stroke of half-time in Llanelli.
Nil points
Rugby Tipster followers who took our advice to bet on Georgia <9.5 points would have cashed in against Wales. While the weather isn’t going to be atrocious as it was in west Wales, expecting the Lelos to get into double figures flies in the face of logic.
Ireland inflicted the first-ever nilling on Georgia in Test rugby in a Rugby World Cup qualifier in the late 1990s, and with Andy Farrell as head coach – a man whose reputation was built on defence – there’s a chance they will do so again.
Even with Italy for company in this competition, Georgia have the worst attacking stats in just about every category – lines breaks, tackle breaks, ball carries etc – so the odds on them struggling to get into double figures again are reasonable in our opinion.
In terms of the total points, this weekend’s market for Georgia points scored was exactly the same as the Wales game until being cut from 9.5 to 7.5 points (4/6).
Green machine not firing
The argument for backing Ireland <46.5 points (5/6) is stronger, though. Okay, so they haven’t missed a single goal in the Autumn Nations Cup but accumulating three points at a time is not going to get you even close to a half-century.
To do that, Ireland need to score tries and at the moment they are not converting their territorial advantage and superior possession stats (around 60%) into scores as often as they’d like.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that only once has 40 points been reached in the ANC, a competition that has been blighted by long periods of kick-tennis, where none of the sides appears interested in hurting the opposition with ball in hand.
Georgia were on the receiving end on that occasion but they have improved marginally in defence against Wales and should have enough resolve to keep Ireland at least one score below 47 points.
