Wales first to reach the World Cup quarter-finals with record score over Australia
Wales 40-6 Australia
LYON — The headlines across the rugby world may be concentrating on what happens next with Eddie Jones as Australia’s head coach, but Wales could not care less, after they smashed the Wallabies to smithereens and now only need to beat Georgia to seal top spot in Pool C and a quarter-final with the runners-up from England’s pool – possibly Argentina – in Marseille in mid-October.
Wales were hit by the loss of fly-half Dan Biggar to what looked like a rib injury early on, but Gareth Anscombe was a classy replacement who kicked 23 points including a drop-goal as the ragged Aussies racked up penalties at rucks and mauls and a spectacularly disintegrating scrum.
It equalled Biggar’s World Cup record of 23 points in the famous win over England at Twickenham in 2015.
That was a cliffhanger of a match, though – this was an utter rout, and the shock element for Australia is easy to summarise: the proud Rugby World Cup winners of 1991 and 1999, and finalists of 2003 and 2015, are almost certainly out at the pool stage for the first time.
As the Wallaby gold that used to be a sign of greatness rusts over, for all sorts of endemic and short-term reasons, the controversial parachuting-in of Jones to replace the sacked Dave Rennie in January this year has been a disaster.
The masterplan of giving the irascible former England and Japan coach a five-year contract to take on the British & Irish Lions in 2025 and win the World Cup being staged by Australia in 2027 could now meet an abrupt end.
The Sydney Morning Herald on Sunday confirmed the rumours already around that Jones had been speaking to Japan about their head coach’s role – though Rugby Australia said he had denied it.
Jones had brought Australia’s youngest ever squad to a World Cup, but by beating only Georgia here, he has simply added to a dire run now standing at six wins in the last 25 Tests.
And you can imagine the news of his interest in another job being rotten for morale in a team missing their three most impactful tight forwards injured.
The thousands of Wales supporters in Lyon lapped it up. Their team lacks the power of other contenders, but they have spirit and cohesion – and the perfect start here with a set-move try by scrum-half Gareth Davies after 140 seconds.
Ryan Elias found flanker Aaron Wainwright in the line-out, and with the Aussies’ midfield mindful of the crash-ball threat of George North, the ball was instead flicked inside by the inside centre Nick Tompkins to Wales’s rampaging flanker-captain Jac Morgan to make a clean break. The final pass to the supporting Davies was the easiest bit.
The majority of Wales’s tries at this World Cup have originated from line-outs and scrums, with the granite-hard lock Will Rowlands among the key figures.
Biggar converted the try but then the fly-half then suffered a distressing deja vu as he made a saving tackle on the lock Richie Arnold. Four years ago, when Wales beat Australia 29-25 in the World Cup pool stage in Japan, Biggar was forced off in the first half, and Rhys Patchell had to close the match out.
In that 2019 World Cup, both these countries went through to the quarter-finals, but this time around Fiji’s win over Australia eight days ago, following on from Wales’s knife-edged defeat of the Fijians on the opening weekend, has changed the course of history.
Anscombe has been through hell with knee and shoulder injuries since he played in the 2015 quarter-finals, and the Kiwi-born No 10 missed his first penalty, from 40 metres.
But any concerns over losing Biggar, Wales’s all-time World Cup top scorer, were groundless as Anscombe belted over the next three kicks for a 16-6 half-time lead.
And it only got better for Wales in a one-sided third quarter, as Anscombe potted another three penalties and converted a try scored by the scampering Tompkins and made by Anscombe with a chip over the top after eight phases.
This was only Wales’s fifth World Cup win in 17 attempts against Rugby Championship opposition, after Argentina in 1991 and 1999 and Australia in 1987 and 2019.
With Morgan finishing a masterful line-out drive for a third try near the end, Gatland’s men can return to their base camp at palatial Versailles feeling like kings, with a fortnight to get ready for the Georgian challenge and the knockout excitement they must expect will follow.
