Australia edged to a 36-22 victory in a pulsating match against Fiji to book their place in the Rugby League World Cup semi-finals. <\/p>\n
Having lost their previous five meetings against Australia by an aggregate score of 246-16, a stunned Brisbane crowd watched Fiji enjoy territorial advantage in the first half and take a 16-12 lead after the break. <\/p>\n
However, the momentum switched back to Kevin Walters’ side in a crucial 60-second spell. <\/p>\n
Solomone Saukuru raced in to seemingly put Fiji 20-12 ahead – but when it was ruled out for obstruction, Australia immediately went up the other end and Tom Trbojevic scored to bring the teams level. <\/p>\n
Trbojevic, who looked vulnerable in defence, crossed twice more for Australia and Jacob Preston added a further try after Semi Valemei had completed his hat-trick for Fiji.<\/p>\n
“There are definitely some areas to improve on,” Trbojevic told Premier Sports. “We didn’t start as we wanted to and couldn’t get a flow. We just needed to play our style of footy.<\/p>\n
“We weren’t at our best but we came away with two points. We need to improve. We’ve got to enjoy a win but we’ve got to be our harshest critics too.”<\/p>\n
Brisbane Broncos centre Kotoni Staggs had opened the scoring for Australia on his home ground, while Sam Walker capped his debut with a try and 12 points with the boot. <\/p>\n
But the manner in which their pack were outmuscled – and in which they allowed Taane Milne and Valemei to score – will be a concern for Walters, whose team head into the last four despite delivering two unconvincing performances in beating New Zealand and Fiji.<\/p>\n
New Zealand will take on Fiji in a make-or-break final pool game on Saturday, 31 October (04:30 GMT), having overcome an early scare themselves in their 82-16 victory over the Cook Islands in Christchurch. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia edged to a 36-22 victory in a pulsating match against Fiji to book their place in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-640961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640961","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=640961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}