Wales march into quarter-finals, shove Wallabies towards exit

LYON, France: Wales romped into the quarter-finals of the World Cup with a record 40-6 victory over Australia on Sunday that left the twice-world champion Wallabies heading for a pool stage exit for the first time.

Scrumhalf Gareth Davies, centre Nick Tompkins and flanker Jac Morgan scored tries with replacement flyhalf Gareth Anscombe banging over six penalties, a conversion and a drop goal to give the Welsh a third win in three Pool C matches.

The Wallabies, stunned by Fiji last week, lacked nothing in endeavour but made too many mistakes and were outclassed by a streetwise Welsh side, who backed their defence, managed the game expertly and clinically exploited their chances.

"Words can’t really explain how proud I am for us to put in a performance like that," said Wales skipper Morgan.

"It's been a tough couple of months and we've worked really hard, so that was massive for us."

Eddie Jones's young team, who managed only two early Ben Donaldson penalties, still have a mathematical chance of getting into the knockout rounds but would need Fiji to lose at least one of their last two pool matches against Georgia and Portugal.

"Credit to Wales, they outplayed us tonight," said Australia captain Dave Porecki.

"I'm embarrassed for the Aussie people. We were hoping to put a show on. It just wasn’t good enough. We’ve got to front up next week. This one hurts."

The game could not have started worse for the Wallabies, who were penalised at the first breakdown and a try down in under three minutes after Morgan burst through the midfield and offloaded for Davies to score.

Australia immediately tested the Welsh defence through multiple phases and came away with a Donaldson penalty in the ninth minute and another in the 14th as the result