The Wallabies have suffered a 42-8 hammering at the hands of the All Blacks in Sydney tonight. It was an attacking master class from the All Blacks as they ran in six tries and took advantage of some poor handling and a high missed tackle count from the Wallabies who have some serious injury concerns with Matt Giteau, Matt Toomua and Rob Horne all injured in the heavy loss.
The Match
Bernard Foley opened the scoring with an early penalty goal after three minutes to make it 3-0.
But that lead wouldn’t last for long as the All Blacks threw it wide from a counter attack after Matt Giteau failed to find touch and Kieran Read running in the wide channels on the left wing found Ryan Crotty and he evaded the Wallabies defenders for the opening try.
The Wallabies had injury concerns in the opening ten minutes with Giteau having to leave the field with an ankle injury after bravely attempting to battle on.
Beauden Barrett added two penalty goals for the visitors and were unlucky not to add to their score after being ruled offside from a charge down with Brodie Retallick’s brilliant handling all for nothing just as the All Blacks forwards started to dominate and take control of the game.
The Wallabies had a rare excursion into the opposition 22 on the back of a penalty but the lineout suffered the wobbles and lost two throws in a row and just like that, the All Blacks had gone down the other end of the field and Barrett was over.
The Wallabies just couldn’t get into the game as the possession and territory stats weighed heavily in the All Blacks favour and played the majority of the half in their own end.
Matt Toomua, on as a replacement for Giteau, copped a head knock and he had to leave the field and things only got worse for the Wallabies as a clearing kick from Bernard Foley was charged down by Jerome Kaino and he collected the bounce to all but seal the game for a 25-3 lead with the disjointed backline not helping the Wallabies cause.
If there were any questions over Beauden Barrett wearing the ten jersey for New Zealand, they were put to rest as he found space with ease again in a man of the match perforamnce amongst the Wallabies defence and he sent Waisake Naholo to the line for a 32-3 lead at the break.
Naholo had to leave the field as he injured himself scoring the try just as Rob Horne was leaving the field with a shoulder injury to leave the backline depleted.
The All Blacks didn’t take the foot off the accelerator in the second half and were still ruthless as the Wallabies simply had nothing to combat the attack.
Dane Coles, who wasn’t originally named in the 23 due to a rib injury, was on the end of an overlap after an earlier break from Malakai Fekitoa from another turnover and they kept adding more tries as Julian Savea got in on the act after evading the cover defence in the left corner as they All Blacks ticked over the 40 point mark.
The Wallabies tried admirably to score something towards the end of the game and got some help as Kieran Read was binned for disrupting a rolling maul and with five minutes left, Nick Phipps who was having to play on the wing with the high injury toll, scored the only Wallabies try of the night to make it 42-8.
The All Blacks thought they had scored one last try to Israel Dagg as he collected a Barrett cross field kick but a knock in the lead up rubbed that one out but a penalty advantage from an earlier infringement had the All Blacks go for one last score but couldn’t get over the line to leave the final score 42-8.
The Details
Score & Scorers
[one_half last=”no”]WALLABIES 8
Tries: Phipps
Conversions:
Penalties: Foley
[/one_half]
[one_half last=”yes”]ALL BLACKS 42
Tries: Crotty, Barrett, Kaino, Naholo, Coles, Savea
Conversions: Barrett 3
Penalties: Barrett 2
[/one_half]
Cards
73 mins – Read (NZ) – Yellow
Crowd
65,328
Photos by Peter Mitchell
