Cipriani suffers rebel hell on his Aussie debut

Danny Cipriani suffered a major setback today in his bid to prove a move to the Melbourne Rebels can restart his England career with the new Super 15 franchise taking a 43-0 hammering from the New South Wales Waratahs.

The Rebels opening match in the expanded competition confirmed fears that Cipriani had joined a side short of top-quality players and he now faces a long and difficult season.

The former England fly-half had been one of the new team's marquee signings as the Rebels prepared for their first season in the competition. And although he started on the bench, he was thrown into the fray as a ninth-minute replacement for the injured James Hilgendorf.

The ex-London Wasps player, who quit English rugby to try and change his image, had to watch as the Waratahs - last season's semi-finalists - scored tries through Kurtley Beale (two), Drew Mitchell (two), Tatafu Polota-Nau, Rob Horne and Phil Waugh to claim a comfortable win.

Cipriani was off target with a first-half penalty attempt as the hosts, who also had Wales No8 Gareth Delve and ex-Bath and England flanker Michael Lipman among their ranks, ended the match scoreless.

Coach Rod Macqueen has to pick his men up after this disaster and also deal with injury problems after just one match.

He said: "They just made us pay for all of our mistakes. Things obviously didn't go to plan. It was a bit disruptive for us with Jimmy [Hilgendorf] going off so early. We paid the price for turning the ball over and we knew that would happen."

There was more bad news for Macqueen as flanker Hoani MacDonald suffered a suspected broken hand while inside-centre Cooper Vuna picked up a shoulder injury.

While the loss of Hilgendorf was critical, Macqueen is backing his Rebels to bounce back.

"We did know that this could happen and I've got a fair bit of faith in the good things that they did - we will be competitive this year," he added.

"However, I don't think you can ever go away from the fact that you're going to be judged on the scoreboard.

"We know that we've got to improve and we hope from a public's perspective we can show that sooner rather than later.

"We're not making excuses because we know we've got a lot of work to do. We've got to be very honest about that or else we won't improve."

Captain and Wallaby centre Stirling Mortlock tried to put a brave face on after the game, paying tribute to the incredible feat of getting a 25,000 crowd in a city dominated by other codes of football. "To have 25,000 Melbourne people here come out and watch was fantastic," said Mortlock.

"The atmosphere was really amazing and we're looking forward to having their support.

"The communication was pretty poor and at times it was pretty tough to get the call out.

"We're going to have to go back and work at it, especially the defensive line which wasn't good enough."