After a bruising, hard-fought opening, Walsh’s try set the tone as debutant Mark Nawaqanitawase shifted the ball left for the rampaging Brisbane Broncos full-back to go over in style.<\/p>\n
England were unhappy as scrum-half Mikey Lewis appeared to be tripped in the build-up, and there looked to be a forward pass too – but the try was given following a review by video referee Jack Smith.<\/p>\n
Smith partly redeemed himself to the Wembley crowd by disallowing a second Australia try before the break as Dom Young was taken out by Josh Addo-Carr as he jumped to catch a high kick.<\/p>\n
Wane’s side initially responded well to conceding and defence-splitting grubber kicks from George Williams and Tom Johnstone had the green and gold defence on their heels.<\/p>\n
But Nathan Cleary added a penalty with the last action of the first half to put Australia 8-0 up – and they extended the lead straight after the interval.<\/p>\n
After putting the hosts under constant pressure from the restart, Angus Crichton strode through to score with full-back Jack Welsby too deep and allowing him to go through far too easily.<\/p>\n
Australia kept England at arm’s length thereafter, easing their way to victory in the first meeting between the sides since the 2017 World Cup final.<\/p>\n
That success was secured with 15 minutes remaining as second row Crichton scythed through the defence again for his second try, and more gloss was added when a superb field-length move down the left was finished by Walsh.<\/p>\n
Daryl Clark barged over in the final minutes for England, but it was no more than a consolation.<\/p>\n
A downside for the visitors was that captain Issah Yeo was forced off in the first half after failing a head injury assessment following a clash with Young. He will also miss the second Test on Saturday (14:30 GMT) at Hill Dickinson Stadium in Liverpool.<\/p>\n
There were some positives for England.<\/p>\n
Williams and Lewis started as the half-back pairing for the first time, with Harry Lewis left out of the squad, and fitted like a hand in glove. Expect them to repeat their duet in Liverpool next week.<\/p>\n
There, England will continue a quest for a first win over Australia in three decades, and try to rescue a first Ashes series triumph in 55 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a bruising, hard-fought opening, Walsh’s try set the tone as debutant Mark Nawaqanitawase shifted the ball left…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-527302","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}