Australia 22 New Zealand 10

SYDNEY, Nov 15: As exultant choruses of “Waltzing Matilda” swept around the Olympic stadium, Australia demonstrated yet again on Saturday how dangerous it is to write off the Wallabies.

Playing with passion, power and the acute intelligence which marks their rugby Australia defeated World Cup favourites New Zealand 22-10 to become the first team to qualify for consecutive finals.

New Zealand have not won the World Cup since the first tournament in 1987 while Australia have the chance next Saturday to win it for a third time. They will meet the winners of Sunday’s northern hemisphere semifinal between Six Nations champions England and France.

But while Australia managed to reinvent themselves in the space of a week after beating Scotland in last weekend’s quarterfinal, New Zealand’s flaws were cruelly exposed.

Australia captain George Gregan’s contention on Friday that his team would unveil a new game plan on Saturday had been meet with scepticism at best and outright scorn at worst.

On a balmy spring evening, Australia did not come up with any startling new tactics. What they did was to execute the basics of the game far better than the All Blacks.

Elton Flatley kicked his goals, failing with only one attempt out of seven. His counterpart Leon MacDonald failed with two kickable penalties in the first half which would have levelled the score 13-13 at the break.

New Zealand number eight Jerry Collins, so influential in the quarterfinal against South Africa, twice conceded silly penalties in his own half. Twice Flatley made him pay the price.

Australia flyhalf Stephen Larkham, close to the form he showed in the 1999 tournament, was increasingly dangerous with the ball in hand.

But more importantly he kicked with great intelligence, forcing Joe Rokocoko to continually turn and run. Rokocoko, scorer of 16 tries in his first year of international rugby, accordingly looked no more certain on defence than Jonah Lomu in the 1999 semifinal loss to France and his general play was inevitably affected.

An intercept try in the 10th minute by centre Stirling Mortlock, who seized on a floated pass by Carlos Spencer, gave Australia the impetus they needed as they launched wave after wave of attack.

Spencer partially atoned with a lightning break five minutes before the interval to set up captain Reuben Thorne for a try and keep his team in the game.

That proved to be the extent of the try-scoring as New Zealand tried everything they knew, from a series of forward drives up the middle to the swift passing out wide which has marked their play in Australia.

It was all to no avail. Australia’s defence held firm and they also pinched crucial lineouts to keep New Zealand back-pedalling while Flatley continued to kick goals.—Reuters