Wales hammer Australia

Wales produced a brilliant display, beating an increasingly ragged Australia 40-6 at the OL Stadium on Sunday, to become the first team to guarantee a spot in the 2023 Rugby World Cup quarter-finals.

With both sides viewing it as a must-win clash in the tightly contested Pool ‘C’, it was Wales who came out firing. A penalty within 30 seconds was followed by a scorching break from Captain Jac Morgan, who fed a rushing Gareth Davies to dot down under the posts.

Australia did respond, with dangermen Samu Kerevi and Marika Koroibete to the fore. And when Wales linchpin Dan Biggar was forced off in the 12th minute, with the men in red leading just 7-6, the Wallabies looked to be in the hunt. But almost nothing went right for the two-time World Cup winners from then on.

A succession of penalties enabled Biggar’s replacement Gareth Anscombe to pull Wales into a 16-6 half-time lead and another lightning start to the second 40 minutes saw centre Nick Tompkins gather Anscombe’s cute chip to touch down.

With Australia bereft of ideas and the penalty count creeping up, Morgan scored off the back of a maul and Anscombe added a further three penalties and a drop goal to secure Wales’ biggest ever victory over Australia.

The omens were potentially cast from the kick-off in retrospect, as Australia gave away a penalty at the very first breakdown seconds in, and less than two minutes later, a wonderful Wales strike play off a line-out sent Morgan sprinting into space, before he offloaded superbly for Davies to take on and score.

A lengthy Wallabies attack through 14 phases in the Wales ‘22’ followed, but it came to nothing when prop Angus Bell knocked on by the posts. Having been playing on penalty advantage, Australia went back to kick three points through Donaldson.

Five minutes later, Donaldson kicked Australia within a point of Wales after a dominant scrum penalty, but they, quite shockingly, would not score again.

Australia are faced with exiting the competition at the pool stage for the first time in their history, unless Fiji – who spectacularly beat the Wallabies last weekend – slip up in both of their remaining matches against Georgia and Portugal.

Wales next face Georgia on October 7, in their final Pool ‘C’ game, at the Stade de la Beaujoire in Nantes while Australia are next in action vs Portugal on October 1, for their final Pool ‘C’ game, at the Stade Geoffroy-Guichard in Saint-Étienne. (C.D)

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