Ireland's Rugby World Cup hopes have come to an end at the quarter-final stage following a 43-20 defeat at the hands of Argentina.
The Six Nations champions had battled back from 17-0 down at one stage to restore some hope, but Los Pumas proved too much in the end to book a place in the final four.
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It was the South American side who settled quicker, as Joaquin Tuculet superbly collected a high ball from the back before offloading to Matias Moroni to burst down the right and touch down for the opener.
Huge gaps were already beginning to appear in the Ireland backline, which their opponents again exposed when Juan Imhoff chased down Santiago Cordero's chipped pass to touch down right on the line to put Los Pumas in early control.
Things got even worse for Ireland soon after, with Tommy Bowe being stretchered off and Nicolas Sanchez kicking over three more points to leave Ireland with an early mountain to climb.
That created a 14-point margin with just 14 minutes on the clock, meaning that Joe Schmidt's men would need to equal a World Cup record if they were to overturn the deficit.
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A rare error from Argentina soon after gave their opponents real hope, though, as Ramiro Herrera charged into Keith Earls to earn himself a yellow card, and in those 10 minutes Ireland were able to open their account through Ian Madigan's close-range kick.
While Argentina did manage to keep their tally ticking over via the boot of Sanchez, coming after some Chris Henry ill-discipline, the northern hemisphere side cut the deficit right in half thanks to Luke Fitzgerald's score.
The replacement cut inside from the left, dodging one tackle and crashing over to restore hope among Ireland's strong home contingent in the Welsh capital.
With Argentina now back to full strength, having conceded 10 points while down to 14 men, the momentum remained with the Green and Whites who were unable to further pile on the pressure before the break due to Madigan's penalty crashing back off the left upright.
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Only on three previous occasions had a team overturned a 10-point half-time deficit, but Ireland went the right way about adding their name to that list by crossing over less than four minutes after the restart.
Jordi Murphy was the man to bag it - a first international try on his debut - coming after Fitzgerald showed some fine footwork to slip past Agustin Creevy and play in his teammate to lift the roof off the Millennium Stadium.
Ireland have historically had the better of this fixture, winning 10 to their opponents' five, yet even with the crowd behind them they struggled to fully contain the world's sixth-placed side.
With every last point now proving vital, the teams shared a pen apiece with Sanchez and Madigan keeping their nerve in front of the sticks to set up a pulsating finish in the final match to be held in Cardiff.
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The bronze-medal winners of 2007 were perhaps a little fortunate when Herrera, already sin-binned once this afternoon, led with his hand in the ruck but escaped any punishment on this occasion.
With an hour of the match now played, and the contest more balanced at this stage than at any other point, Ireland squandered a big chance to level things up for the first time since the opening minutes after Madigan got his pen all wrong.
It looked to prove costly as Sanchez maintained his solid kicking record to extend the deficit to six points, making him the top points scorer at this year's competition, with just 15 minutes left to play.
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Then came the killer blow for one of the northern hemisphere's last remaining hopes, as Tuculet stretched over the line to put Los Pumas on the brink of the semi-finals.
It was left to Imhoff to cross over for a fourth try and Sanchez to kick over once more to round things off for the South Americans, who will now face Australia in next weekend's second semi-final showdown.
For Ireland, on the other hand, they have now lost seven times at this first knockout round of the showpiece competition.
Daniel Lewis
