But instead his tournament-ending injury came from a metal pole holding up a sign advertising the Cup.
Australia coach Tim Sheens is pushing to bring in a replacement to his 24-man squad, which would be under normal circumstances out of the question, but the Kangaroo camp is asking anyway after the bizarre circumstances of the injury.
If unsuccessful, the likes of Boyd Cordner will feature of the bench in Lewis’s utility back/forward role.
After the Kangaroos hard-fought win over England in the first of their group A matches, Sheens left some of his stars on the sidelines, including halfback Cooper Cronk replaced by Daly Cherry-Evans and Billy Slater’s spot taken by Greg Inglis. They along with Sam Thaiday are likely to be back for the final group match against the pool’s easybeats, Ireland, with five-eighth Johnathan Thurston rested before the quarter finals.
Australia scored six tries in their convincing victory over tough Fiji. Josh Papalii, Darius Boyd and Michael Jennings found the try line in the first period before Josh Morris, Daly Cherry-Evans and Luke Lewis, before his nasty injury, added four-pointers in the second.
What they said
Australia coach Tim Sheens: “We’re starting to get serious in the respect we need to start coming up with the combinations that we’re going to go through from there. 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 coach Rick Stone: “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.”
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