Kangaroos backrower heading home after dislocating his shoulder.
Australia head coach Tim Sheens confirmed Luke Lewis would be heading home from the Rugby League World Cup after dislocating his shoulder in the 34-2 win over Fiji.
Lewis scored the last of the Kangaroos’ six tries as they claimed their second win of the tournament in St Helens to book a place in the quarter-finals.
However, moments after benefiting from strong play for Greg Inglis to complete the scoring, the 30-year-old suffered a nasty collision with the advertising hoarding behind the in-goal area.
Lewis was chasing for a second try and, after failing to dot down, slid across the wet surface and collided heavily with the boards with Sheens confirming that he had dislocated his shoulder.
Josh Papalii scored Australia’s first try on his debut after 15 minutes with Darius Boyd and Michael Jennings following suit in the first half and Josh Morris and Daly Cherry-Evans after the break.
And Kangaroos head coach Sheens admitted with regret that the injury would be sending Lewis, who plays for Cronulla Sharks in the NRL, back to Australia in the coming days.
“Luke Lewis is in a lot of pain, his shoulder is dislocated and it still hasn’t been put back in place so it looks like we have lost him for the tour,” said Sheens.
“A dislocated shoulder means he will be going home. We will wait and see what happens before we make decisions about the next game.
“The guys who didn’t play will be back. I thought we controlled the game from start to finish, defensively we did, I was really happy that we didn’t allow a try.
“Fiji were good, they held on to a lot of ball, we wasted a lot of ball but at the same token our defence was good enough.”
Fiji actually scored the first points of the game courtesy of a Alipate Noilea penalty in the eighth minute while the closest they came to scoring a try was through Apisai Koroisau.
He went to ground with the ball just after the hour only for the video referee to rule that Boyd’s boot had denied him and Inglis stole – but still Fiji head coach Rick Stone was proud of the performance.
“I thought we tried really hard, we controlled the ball pretty well. We probably needed to throw a bit more at the Aussies in attack but their defensive line is outstanding, particularly on their own line,” said Stone.
“Maybe we could have thrown a bit more at them but other than that I was really proud of our lads. We have got to keep building, obviously we have played a couple of games now and we have got to be a bit better and hopefully we can throw a bit more at England when we play them next week.
“Tough conditions but I thought both teams handled the ball pretty well considering and both got through their sets and put a bit of pressure on each other. But we can do a bit better and hopefully we can improve from that.”
COMMENTS