Wales and Australia have been familiar foes in the professional era. Having personally lived through many days of humiliation from Messrs Campese, Gregan, and the hundreds of Ella brothers, recent history has been somewhat kinder to the men in red.

Wales wonderful win over the Wallabies at the last Rugby World Cup was a truly memorable one, and yesterday in Lyon the two teams met once again to effectively decide qualification for the knock-out stages of RWC 2023.

Wales needed a win, any old win to guarantee a place in the quarter finals, but surely no one in their wildest dreams anticipated the performance that emanated from the men in red, and indeed the margin of victory.

Australia were poor, but Wales gave an eighty minute accurate, precise and intelligent performance, and after the year they’ve have had, on and off the field, this was bread of heaven and it fed us until it would have been greedy to ask for more.

The feast began after three minutes when a superbly executed try from Gareth Davies got Wales off to a flying start. A 16-6 half time lead built by the boot of Gareth Anscombe was a nice little cushion to build on in the second period, and boy did Wales build on it.

Nick Tompkins 48th minute try and the metronomic boot of Anscombe gave Wales a 32-6 lead with twenty minutes remaining.

This is normally the time when we Welsh retire to our default location, behind the sofa, peeping through our fingers, but for once, like a pit pony glimpsing daylight, we were drawn to a comfortable seat front of house basking in a victory that was already in the bag.

A 78th minute Jac Morgan try applied the coup de grace and Wales headed to the quarter finals with a game to spare.

Pre tournament no hopers to the the first guaranteed Quarter finalists is some journey, and whilst many Wales fans missed the start of this match stuck on the Lyon trams, there is no doubt that Wales are on track, and poor Australia have gone off the rails.