Watch the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup live and on-demand via Stan Sport.<\/a><\/p>\nIt was a win in which the stats fail to reflect just how dominant the Wallaroos were.<\/p>\n
They were second-best to Samoa in possession and territory, forced to make over 40 more tackles.<\/p>\n
But the clinical Wallaroos attack and defence were world-class, scoring with nearly every entry inside the 22, while on the contrary, coming up with massive tackles to force turnover after turnover when under pressure.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Desiree Miller produced a hat-trick, with centre Cecilia Smith a clear player of the match after an excellent showing from the Western Force midfielder.<\/p>\n
The Wallaroos\u2019 energy was infectious throughout the week and that carries into the opening half with a blitz of tries, started by Katalina Amosa after just 90 seconds.<\/p>\n
Winger Miller was next to follow as she carved up the Samoans for a hat-trick.<\/p>\n
She scored her first in the sixth minute before two quick tries in the second quarter as the Aussies found ample space at wide.<\/p>\n
It was set up by a dominant set-piece, which dominated the scrum and made metres in bunches from the rolling maul.<\/p>\n
18-year-old fullback Caitlyn Halse became the youngest Australian to score at the World Cup, powering through the line and slamming the ball down.<\/p>\n
The Aussies were left chasing the clock in the first half as Eva Karpani powered to the line as a near-perfect first half delivered a 45-0 lead after 40 minutes.<\/p>\n
The Salford crowd tried to rally Samoa into action, with a host of Welsh and Scottish fans in the ground for the double header.<\/p>\n
Every half break was cheered like mad and every positive Australian play was met with near silence.<\/p>\n
The Samoans fed off the energy and put Australia under real pressure, forcing some desperate defensive plays from the likes of Halse and Karpani.<\/p>\n
It was a test the Wallaroos passed with flying colours, setting up the counter for centre Cecilia Smith to score a well-deserved try in her best game in the gold jersey.<\/p>\n
Adiana Talakai then crossed for back-to-back tries as the Wallaroos converged on their highest ever win at a World Cup.<\/p>\n
Halse\u2019s second ensured Australia\u2019s place in the record books, the most they\u2019ve scored in a World Cup game.<\/p>\n
The only concern for coach Jo Yapp will be the fitness of Miller after she was hit high late in a nasty high shot by Melina Grace Salale, who was red carded.<\/p>\n
Wallaroos 73 (Amosa, Miller 3, Halse 2, Chancellor, Karpani, Smith, Talakai 2 tries; Wood 6, Cramer 3 cons) def Samoa 0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Wallaroos have produced their highest ever win at a Rugby World Cup, defeating Samoa 73-0 in Salford.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,5993,85,19259],"class_list":["post-90040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-samoa","tag-sports","tag-wallaroos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90040","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=90040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}