The Kangaroos have enjoyed the perfect semi-final tuneup with a comprehensive victory over Cook Islands in Townsville on Saturday night.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Australia ran in 12 tries to one to claim a 66-6 victory in front of 19,172\u00a0fans at Queensland Country Bank Stadium.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Back-rower Jacob Preston scored a try and showed why he’s one of the best ball-running backrowers in the game, while Jack Bostock and Tom Trbojevic both scored hat-tricks and Tino Fa’asuamaleaui crossed for a double.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ethan Strange was in the thick of the action in his Kangaroos debut and played lock after coming off the bench early in the second half.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The triumph completes an undefeated group phase for the Kangaroos and was a significant improvement on last week’s scratchy performance against Fiji.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Australia’s focus will now turn to a sudden-death semi-final at Allianz Stadium next Sunday night.<\/p>\n
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Jack Bostock Try<\/p>\n
The Kangaroos will likely play the loser of Sunday’s blockbuster between Samoa and Tonga.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After two below-par performances to start their tournament Australia needed to find their rhythm in Townsville.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While they were not perfect against a spirited Cook Islands, the Kangaroos flexed their muscle to assert their status as World Cup favourites.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bostock opened the scoring in just the third minute before the Aitu hit back and took the lead after Rua Ngatikaura burrowed over from dummy half.<\/p>\n
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Tino Fa’asuamaleaui Try<\/p>\n
Cook Islands threatened to score a second but the Australian defence held firm and the points started flowing soon after.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Four tries in 13 minutes saw the Kangaroos turn a 6-4 deficit into a 28-6 half-time lead.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bostock crossed for his second soon after the break, triggering an avalanche of second half points.<\/p>\n
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Jack Bostock Try<\/p>\n
Trbojevic scored his second, before Preston finished off a Cam Munster break and Fa’asuamaleaui produced a barnstorming solo try to bring up the half century.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Kangaroos crossed for three more tries to close out the game while denying the Aitu’s late bid for a try of their own.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Kangaroos have enjoyed the perfect semi-final tuneup with a comprehensive victory over Cook Islands in Townsville on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":947896,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-947895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947895","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=947895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/947896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=947895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=947895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=947895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}