Australia 28 Fiji 13: The Wallabies ease to victory but fail to collect a bonus point

Two-try hero: David Popock went over twice for the Wallabies
Michael Steele/Getty Images
Chris Jones23 September 2015

England received a major boost when Australia failed to collect a try scoring bonus point in their victory over Fiji in Cardiff.

It appeared that the Wallabies would match England’s try bonus point effort against Fiji but despite reaching three tries by the 43rd minute they could not get that fourth touchdown. Two came from Man of the Match David Pocock through drives off line outs that worked.

Fiji staged a brilliant second half fight back and stole three successive line outs and could have scored a late try when the Wallabies were down to 14 men with the sin binning of centre Tevita Kuridriani.

Fiji had early chances under the closed Millennium Stadium roof to test just how rusty the Wallabies were in the tournament but the cause was not helped by the loss in the opening two minutes of right wing Waisea Nayacalevu with a knee injury which brought Harlequins wing Asaeli Tikoirotuma into the action.

He had to watch Bernard Foley kick his first penalty to give the Wallabies the lead and then Fiji got into their stride and even caused scrum problems for the opposition. The Wallabies were under such pressure their hooker and captain Stephen Moore couldn’t strike for the ball and the Islanders won a penalty.

Stu Forster/Getty Images

The Wallabies were put under pressure in their own 22 and resorted to giving away two cynical penalties but no one was yellow carded and referee Glen Jackson, the ex-Saracens No10, hand out a penalty which Nemani Nadolo kicked.

The big wing tried to spark life into his team’s back play but twice gave away silly penalties for bad tackling technique and with the Wallabies chasing a try bonus point they kicked for touch. Twice they won good enough ball to set up a driving maul that ended with No8 Dave Pocock diving over the line to claim the try. A Foley conversion and penalty put the Wallabies 18-3 up at the break and it looked a long way back for the Fijians who appeared to be resorting to sevens rugby too early in the face of good Australian defence.

Dan Mullan/Getty Images

The third try came three minutes after the break through prop Sekope Kefu which Foley converted but that proved to be their last points of the half. Fiji tried to work Nadolo clear and with the defence fanning out, outside half Ben Volavola raced through for a solo try under the post which Nadolo converted to add to his earlier penalty.

The crowd of more than 67,000 started singing “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” before the end which will have been noted along with the fact that Australia had to make 122 tackles compared to Fiji’s 83.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in