A patchy Ireland team beat a much-improved Georgia 23-10 in the Autumn Nations Cup at Lansdowne Road.
It ensured Ireland finished second to England in their group and will play Scotland, the runners-up in the other group, for third place next weekend.
England host the inaugural final against France at Twickenham, while Wales and Italy meet for fifth, and Georgia and Fiji, who haven’t yet played because of a coronavirus outbreak in their camp, will battle for seventh.
An experimental Ireland deserved to lead 20-7 at halftime but the highlight came from Georgia’s first points in the tournament, a brilliant try by centre Giorgi Kveseladze.
The second half, however, was a stop-start stalemate as the physical Georgians’ grew in confidence but were prone to errors, and Ireland’s effort became more disjointed and contained.
Ireland scored both tries in the first half, had another disallowed and had scoring attempts held up on the line at the end of each half.
Flyhalf Billy Burns, making a first accomplished start that lasted only 45 minutes, snatched Chris Farrell’s sweet back pass and sliced over beside the posts, and right wing Hugo Keenan took fullback Jacob Stockdale’s miss-pass to score untouched.
But the best try was Georgia’s and worth waiting for after nearly three hours of tournament play without a score.
Kveseladze burst through a gap on halfway with an inside pass from Soso Matiashvili, slipped one defender, dummied Stockdale, twisted up Burns and slid in by the left post with Stuart McCloskey on his back.
At the end of the half, a 50-metre try by McCloskey in his first Test in two years was rubbed out because of a forward pass and captain James Ryan was held up by Kveseladze.
After halftime, each side added only a penalty kick and emptied the benches.
Ireland gave a debut to back Shane Daly, and Georgia debuted 18-year-old fullback David Niniashvili and 20-year-old scrumhalf Mikheil Alania.
At the end, Ireland No. 8 CJ Stander charged twice at the tryline and was denied, first being held up by Alania and flanker Tornike Jalagonia, and then shoved back by Kveseladze.
