Wallabies crush Uruguay to go top

Birmingham

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Sean McMahon led Australia to the top of their World Cup group yesterday with a comprehensive 65-3 victory over minnows Uruguay ahead of crunch matches with archrivals England and Wales.

Australia ran in 11 tries -- two each from McMahon, returning exile Drew Mitchell and Ben McCalman -- but largely appeared to do the minimum necessary for victory in the Pool A match at Villa Park.

Henry Speight got one of the tries of the tournament at the end of a 65 metre run. Joe Tomane, Dean Mumm, Matt Toomua and Tevita Kuridrani got the others.

With the starting XV boasting 14 changes from the side that laboured to an opening 28-13 victory over Fiji, Australia were by far the superior team.

Victory left the Wallabies in first place in the "pool of death" on nine points with a points difference of +77.

Wales are second, also on nine points (+48pts) and England third on six (+21). Australia play England and Wales over the next two weekends. 

McMahon, who played a vintage game at openside flanker against an outpowered and outpaced opposition, opened the scoring, peeling off from a driving maul for an easy run-in.

From the restart, McMahon broke clear, the ball was played right, Quad Cooper's smart offload seeing Tomane in for a try with Uruguay looking shaky in defence.

The other side of Cooper's game was witnessed when he caught Uruguay scrum-half Agustin Ormaechea around the neck and flung him to the floor. French referee Pascal Gauzere had no option but to brandish a yellow card.

The Australian team completely dominated the set-piece, but poor handling ruined many a clean linebreak.

Felipe Berchesi kicked a 24th penalty for Uruguay, just desserts for a dogged display by a team boasting just four professional players and ranked just 19th in the world.

As Cooper came back on, a consolidated Wallaby advance ended with skipper Mumm shrugging off the lame challenge of Leandro Leivas to dot down.

The requisite bonus point came on the half-hour mark when a slick backline move resulted in Speight sprinting in with a swallow-dive to the corner.

Cooper's deftness was then on display, a beautiful inside pass finding flanker McCalman for a simple run-in.

Uruguay's best break of the half came when Berchesi broke free, a fantastic McMahon tap tackle snuffing out the attack.

Mitchell, after an error-ridden first 40 minutes, was first on the scoresheet in the second period, the Toulon winger jinking his way past five defenders for a memorable try.