Winger Aaron Grandidier-Nkanang scored a brace of tries on test debut, as France came from behind to crush Australia 42-26 in their Nations Championship match in Brisbane on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Among eight changes to France’s starting 15, Olympic sevens gold medallist Grandidier-Nkanang touched down in both halves to help ‘Les Bleus’ rebound from their 34-32 loss to New Zealand last week with a bonus-point victory.<\/p>\n
The Six Nations champions trailed 21-12 at half-time at Suncorp Stadium, after two early tries from Wallabies flanker Fraser McReight, but they rallied superbly, scoring 30 unanswered points in a four-try burst to dismantle the hosts.<\/p>\n
“It was a very, very tough first half,” said flyhalf Romain Ntamack. “We knew we had to keep pushing and we’re really happy about that second half.”<\/p>\n
France will head into their final test of the mid-year Nations Championship phase against Japan with confidence, while Australia, who slumped to their ninth loss in 10 matches, will meet Italy, 47-17 losers to New Zealand earlier on Saturday.<\/p>\n
New Zealand-born lock Emmanuel Meafou crashed over in the third minute to open the scoring for the French, but Australia hit back almost immediately, with a try to hooker Brandon Paenga-Amosa.<\/p>\n
Unstoppable<\/p>\n
Grandidier-Nkanang nudged France ahead with his first try in the 18th minute, but the match turned again, when Meafou was given a yellow card for a high tackle on Rob Valetini.<\/p>\n
McReight burrowed over the line to snatch the lead back for the Wallabies and grabbed a second five-pointer from the back of a maul, after a well-executed lineout drive before the interval.<\/p>\n
Maxime Lucu trimmed the lead to six points with a long-range penalty after the break and, from there, France were unstoppable.<\/p>\n
Yoram Moefana made a terrific linebreak, before being brought down a metre from the line.<\/p>\n
Lucu shifted the ball wide to fullback Matthieu Jalibert, who chipped over to the left corner, where Grandidier-Nkanang collected the ball off the bounce and planted it over the line.<\/p>\n
With Wallabies fullback Tom Wright given a yellow card for not rolling away from a ruck near the tryline, France stormed ahead with a showcase of pace, power and precision.<\/p>\n
Ntamack danced through defenders Ryan Lonergan and James Slipper to cross at the left corner in the 53rd minute, before lock Florian Verhaeghe dived under the posts.<\/p>\n
With Australia’s defence tiring, Kalvin Gourgues made another linebreak on the right flank, setting up winger Theo Attissogbe for another try seven minutes from time.<\/p>\n
Jeremy Williams grabbed a late try to improve the scoreboard for the Wallabies, but it was scant consolation for the Lang Park crowd little more than a year out from Australia hosting the World Cup.<\/p>\n
Joe Schmidt’s tenure as Wallabies coach, which began with a winless European tour to close 2025, is ending on a sour note, with Italy his final match before Les Kiss takes over.<\/p>\n
Forced to play debutant Declan Meredith as starting flyhalf after injuries to Carter Gordon and Ben Donaldson, ashen-faced Schmidt said Australia owed fans a better effort in second halves.<\/p>\n
“We can’t afford to fall away in the back half of games,” he said. “That will be something we will certainly target next week.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Winger Aaron Grandidier-Nkanang scored a brace of tries on test debut, as France came from behind to crush…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":522528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-522527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}