WHEELCHAIR WORLD CUP GAME 2

2008 World Cup finalists Australia showed that they are determined to win the competition this year after they produced a 26-try demolition of Scotland in their opening game.

Australia simply had too much speed and impressive handling skills for the Scots as they propelled themselves into a winning 78-0 lead at halftime.

Man of the match Rick Engles stole the show as he alone collected 32 points in the opening quarter of the game scoring five tries and six conversions. Jason Attard came on in the second half to do more damage as he ran in eight tries.

“We’ve been training together every week for the last six months in preparation for this,” said Australia’s Attard.“It’s looking good for us at this tournament and we always try to stay fast and stay forward so it was a good performance from us today.”

There were also a pair of hat tricks for Mitch Stone and Brad Groves, while Jason Voncina, Yara Ryan and Fabian Castillo landed a pair of scores each.

Engles punished Scotland in the opening 10 minutes as he grabbed all of the opening 18 points due to poor handling errors from the Scots.

The difference in speed between the two teams was clear as Ryan sliced the Scottish defence wide open and offloaded to Stone who could not be caught as he coasted to the tryline.

With only 20 minutes on the clock, Austrailia were well ahead with 46 points on the board as Stone pushed full court for his second of the game.Voncina set up Ryan for a try before scoring one of his own  and then swinging the ball to Groves for a 68-0 advantage.

Groves doubled his tally and Tano Begnato got his name on the scoresheet as the Aussies went into the break with the game wrapped up at 78-0

Sportingly, Australia rested their star players Engles, Voncina and Ryan in the second half with the game clearly in the bag.

However, that didn’t stop Scotland gifting the Australians more tries with a galore of turnovers and handling errors. Jason Attard scored two tries in quick succession to reach the 90-point mark.

Attard added six more tries to overtake Engles as the top scorer for the game while Stone and Groves completed their hat tricks and Fabian Castillo grounded two of his own to round off the victory.

AUSTRALIA
Jason Attard, Tano Bagnato, Daniel Begman, Craig Lannane, Fabian Castillo, Rick Engles, Brad Grove, Mitch Stone, Jason Voncina, Yara Ryan

SCOTLAND
Sean Frame, Tam Pincock, Joey Probst, Chris Calderwood, Graeme Stewart, Elizabeth Ferris, John Cairns, Adam Mould