PERTH, Australia – In a fitting send-off for departing head coach Joe Schmidt, Australia’s national rugby union team the Wallabies snapped a six-match losing skid on Saturday, recording a dominant 57-10 victory over Italy in the first concluding round of the inaugural Nations Championship.
From the opening kickoff at Perth’s venue, the Wallabies seized control of the match that had evaded them in their previous two tournament outings. Lock Josh Canham, who would finish the day with a hat-trick of tries, crossed the try line just four minutes into the game. Fullback Tom Wright and hooker Brandon Paenga-Amosa added two more tries within the next eight minutes, putting the home side up 19-0 before the 15-minute mark. Prop Angus Bell and center Len Ikitau extended the lead further with tries in the closing 15 minutes of the first half, bringing Australia’s first-half try total to six. Italy’s only bright spot of the opening 40 minutes came from captain Michele Lamaro, who scored the Azzurri’s lone first-half try in the 20th minute, sending the two sides into halftime with Australia holding an unassailable 38-5 lead.
Canham completed his hat-trick seven minutes into the second half, picking up the ball at the base of a ruck just meters from Italy’s try line and burrowing over to push the lead to 45-10. Montanna Ioane scored Italy’s second try shortly after halftime, but that would mark the final points the visitors would put on the board. A late Italian try in the 75th minute was disallowed after video review confirmed a knock-on in the in-goal area.
The match ended on a high note for the Wallabies, with replacement hooker Billy Pollard and substitute back Ben Donaldson adding late tries. Donaldson’s 80th-minute try, capped off by a rampaging break from backrower Rob Valetini, put the finishing touches on the 47-point blowout.
The win carries extra weight for the Wallabies after their late-game collapses in the opening two rounds of the Nations Championship. The side held comfortable leads against both Six Nations champion France in Brisbane and Ireland in Sydney, only to surrender those advantages and drop both matches by narrow margins. This time around, Australia held onto its momentum from the opening whistle, closing out Schmidt’s tenure with the positive result the squad had targeted.
“When you’ve let slip leads like that a few times, you’ve got to learn from those experiences, and I felt we did that tonight,” Schmidt told reporters after the match. “We got far enough in front that it wasn’t really going to matter if we weren’t as good in the second half, but there was still some really good stuff out there from the guys.”
For Italy, the first phase of the Nations Championship ended without a single win, and the campaign was marred by off-field disciplinary issues. Head coach Gonzalo Quesada was suspended for the match after receiving an initial two-game ban for criticizing match officials following Italy’s 47-17 loss to New Zealand last week; his suspension was reduced to one game on appeal, leaving him unable to join his team on the sidelines Saturday. The Azzurri already dropped their tournament opener to Japan, and disciplinary trouble extended to the playing side Saturday: already-replaced prop Marco Riccioni received a red card after a melee between players spilled from the touchline into Italy’s technical area, knocking several support staff off their chairs.
Lock Niccolò Cannone also received a four-match suspension after his yellow card for a head-butt against New Zealand was upgraded to a red card post-match. Captain Lamaro acknowledged the team’s underwhelming performance across the opening tournament phase.
“Gutted. Obviously very disappointed with the result and the performance we put in,” Lamaro said of Saturday’s outcome and the tour as a whole. “We played a very good first half against the All Blacks last week, but apart from that we’ve been pretty poor.”
Schmidt first announced his departure from the head coaching role last year, agreeing to stay on through the opening Nations Championship round to allow his successor, Les Kiss, time to complete his existing commitments with Super Rugby side the Queensland Reds. Looking back on his two-and-a-half year tenure, Schmidt said he leaves the program in a better position than he found it, with the squad building toward the 2027 Rugby World Cup, which will be hosted on Australian home soil. Despite a low overall winning percentage during his tenure, Schmidt noted clear progress in team culture and core on-field performance.
“I think the players are more connected. I think the leaders are more vocal,” Schmidt said. “Our fundamentals, our set piece is getting better. To the rugby public, thank you for sticking with us. We’ve just had massive support, and it makes a difference to the players.”