Watch every second of the 2026 Junior World Championship live and on demand via Stan Sport.<\/a><\/p>\nHe was joined in kind by winger Tom Farr-Jones, the nephew of Wallabies legend Nick, and hooker John Grenfell, both of whom crossed for doubles in the strong win.<\/p>\n
The Aussies were fired up after their narrow loss to Wales in the fifth-place semi-final to blow away Argentina either side of the break, with Fittler at the forefront of it.<\/p>\n
The centre scored to start a run of tries for the Australians, piling on 33 unanswered points.<\/p>\n
Three in the space of 10 minutes changed the game as Chris Whitaker\u2019s side entered half-time with a 33-10 lead.<\/p>\n
Fittler\u2019s burst in the first 20 seconds of the second half ended any hopes of an Argentinian comeback, setting Toby Brial up for a commanding advantage that they wouldn\u2019t let go of.<\/p>\n
The early advantage was built off the back of early points from hooker Grenfell, crossing for a pair in his first start of the tournament.<\/p>\n
The Darwin-bred product got the opener after tournament standout TJ Talaileva\u2019s strong carry, giving Australia the lead shortly afterwards at the back of the rolling maul.<\/p>\n
From here, the Australians were in control after Fittler\u2019s try started the onslaught.<\/p>\n
Flanker Luca Cleverley and winger Farr-Jones crossed within a three-minute period, with Farr-Jones benefiting from a lovely no-look ball from skipper Finn Mackay.<\/p>\n
This gave the Aussies a commanding advantage that Argentina would look to eat into, only for Farr-Jones\u2019 second to keep them at bay, his sixth of the tournament.<\/p>\n
Kingbenjamin Swerling-Finaipepe\u2019s smart pick-and-dive brought up the half-century, with the replacement making good use of one of his first touches of the afternoon with his debut try in gold.<\/p>\n
Argentina got the last laugh with a late try, but Australia\u2019s win was never in doubt as they finished on a high.<\/p>\n
“It’s awesome. We spoke about finishing on a high and Argentina are a great side. We played them in TRC and only just won so proud to put a performance on like that,” skipper Finn Mackay said.<\/p>\n
“I think in our last two games\u00a0we didn’t have that killer mindset so to have that today was really great and I’m proud of that effort from the boys.<\/p>\n
“We obviously wanted to be top four so losing to France and Wales wasn’t the goal but to end on a high just sets that up for next year with a bit of momentum and learnings for those boys returning for next year, which we’re really excited about.<\/p>\n
Australia 52 (Tries: Farr-Jones 2, Grenfell 2, Fittler, Cleverley, Swerling-Finaipepe, Brial; Cons: Bird 6) def Argentina 29 (Tries: Pfister, Cambiasso, Canedo, Salinas Mallea; Cons: Serpa 3; Pens: Serpa)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Centre Zach Fittler has shone for Australia U20 as they finish their Junior World Championship in seventh place…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":743980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,8626,760,85],"class_list":["post-806484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australia-u20","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/743980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}