By Hannah Blackwell
Coach Ioan Cunningham has admitted he can offer no excuses for his team’s humbling defeat to Australia which has put Wales on the back foot after just one game of the WXV2 tournament in South Africa.
Having been thrashed 37-5 by a team they had beaten eight days earlier, Wales must bid to avoid a second defeat when they face Italy on Friday.
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Visa problems meant Wales flew south without influential prop Sisilia Tuipulotu, but that setback and tiredness from travel were rejected as excuses by a frustrated Cunningham.
“It’s the same for Australia as well, we both played last Friday, we’ve both done the same amount of travelling,” he said.
“We’ve got to look at ourselves, dust ourselves off, review the game and learn quickly because we’ve got a short turnaround.
“Disruption in the week doesn’t help. It happened last week with three players, it happened this week with two players, but it’s part of what we do.
“We pick up little injuries and we just have to adjust and react the best we can. That’s why we’ve got a squad and we back everyone in our squad.
“We’re obviously disappointed with the result, but we started really well. We showed how threatening we can be with ball in hand. We had plenty of possession, plenty of territory, but all that didn’t convert into points.
“Credit to Australia, they changed their intensity in the last 25 minutes and pulled away from us.”
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Following a cagey opening quarter, in which Australia were forced to dig deep to hold up Wales on their own line, it was the Wallaroos who opened the scoring through Layne Morgan in the 21st minute.
Scrum-half Morgan caught the Welsh defence flat-footed with a quickly tapped penalty and backed her speed to get to the line.
Wales were back level 10 minutes later, though, as Carys Phillips went over at the back of a lineout drive.
However, captain Keira Bevan missed the conversion and the momentum of the match swung decisively in Australia’s favour on the stroke of half-time as tighthead prop Eve Karpani brushed off several tackles to score a sensational solo try.
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Faitala Moleka stretched the Australian lead to eight points with a 56th-minute penalty before the Wallaroos cut loose in the final 16 minutes, running in a further four tries to take the game away from their opponents.
Maya Stewart scored the first and last of that batch of scores, while Moleka round off a fine performance with a try and replacement Lori Cramer – a late addition to the matchday 23 – got the other, as well as two conversions.
Wales’ afternoon was compounded by a late yellow card for replacement hooker Molly Reardon, who had been the heroine only eight days before.
Meanwhile in WXV2 Scotland look well placed.
Australia have two tough games against Scotland and South Africa. South Africa also have to face Italy while Scotland's other opponent is Japan.
On paper Scotland's looks the easier of the three schedules. pic.twitter.com/Hxu9N4kdcM— Scrumqueens – Women’s Rugby (@ScrumQueens) September 28, 2024
