Wales 6 Australia 15: Wales fall to heroic Wallabies

Wales will have to be more clinical than they were against Australia, who played 10 minutes in the second half with 13 men but dug deep to emerge unscathed.

Wales brought a game plan with an intent to disrupt Australia’s breakdown dominance – with captain Sam Warburton, Justin Tipuric and Faletau happy to concede penalties to deny the Wallabies clean ball.

Australia and Wales have named their sides for Saturday’s crucial Pool A encounter at Twickenham. For the best part of 10 minutes the Australians were reduced to 13 men, yet somehow managed to keep Wales at bay. But the team’s been working hard since we got together previous year.

“If your intent is there to do whatever you can to overcome that situation and you’ve prepared for it, sometimes it can happen for you”.

“I’m not shy to say that I’m very proud of the lads and their resilience to go and do what they did”, the 48-year-old admitted in his post-match press conference after the 16-5 victory.

Discussing that prospect, flanker Warburton said: “We beat (South Africa) 11 months ago and the game before that (against New Zealand) we performed extremely well”.

“He did a marvellous job in exploiting the space in and around the ruck against England and that is something we have worked on this week”, Edwards said. “It is not complicated”.

But Wales beat South Africa 12-6 in Cardiff past year to end a run of 16 straight defeats by the Springboks.

Having secured the less treacherous path to World Cup glory, Wallabies coach Michael Cheika continued to play down the benefits of finishing top of Pool A.

England might rather not be playing against minnows Uruguay after the onslaught of criticism they have faced since losing to Australia 33-13 last week.

“I thought we were aggressive in the contact area, so there are a lot of positives to take out of it, but the big lesson is if we spend that much time in their 22 we have got to come away with a try really”. “You’ve got to give Australia credit to defend like that, against us 15 and we were hungry for that try”, he said.

Biggar added a second for Wales but then missed one, his first failure in 16 attempts in the tournament, to leave the Wallabies 9-6 ahead at the break with Foley stretching it 12-6 soon after.

“We got over the line three times and been held up”.

“Six points behind, I felt we needed a try, think any country would have backed themselves to go over”, he said.

When the 13-man Wallabies finally earned a penalty after another crunching tackle, the whole team joined in a mass hug in recognition of their monumental effort that everyone in the 81,000-strong crowd recognised as the key to the match.

Now the focus turns to an enthralling battle to top Pool A. The winners will dodge an improving South African side, with Scotland the likely quarter-final opponents.

“They were throwing their body on the line”.

Both teams are into the quarter-finals with three wins apiece, including victories over England that ensured the host team will not feature in the knockout stage.