Moore has a suspected medial ligament tear meaning he’s likely to miss the rest of the three Test series against Les Bleu after his side opened their account with a convincing 50-23 scoreline.
“It’s a great start for us, the boys scored some great tries,” said hooker Moore, who was captaining his country for the first time. “Unfortunately I wasn’t out there for much of it.”
Israel Folau, Adam Ashley-Cooper, Michael Hooper and Matt Toomua crossed for five-pointers to lead the Wallabies to a 29-9 half-time lead, before Nick Cummins, Kurtley Beale and Pat McCabe crossed in the second period. Fly-half Bernard Foley converted six of the seven tries while France scored all their points from the boot except for a late penalty try.
Coach Ewen McKenzie said he couldn’t forsee the unlucky stroke for his skipper.
“When you lie in bed at night and think about all the scenarios and you plan for this and that, try and be devil’s advocate on everything, but that wasn’t one that I anticipated would happen a couple of minutes into the game,” McKenzie said.
“It’s definitely a medial injury, what level I don’t know, and the scans will tell us that, hopefully it’s not more than that. With a slightly older guy everything’s a bit more loose, but the scans will tell us more.”
There is somewhat of a curse on the proverbial captain’s armband for Australia – in 2012 alone three captains in a row, James Horwill, David Pocock and Will Genia, were all lost to injury.
Michael Hooper deputised though as the Wallabies went to town on the woeful tourists at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane.
“Steve put in such a good platform for us during the week with Link [McKenzie] that it was just ‘heads down, let’s get it going’,” Hooper said.
McKenzie was delighted with the result.
“Seven tries is a good indication of the intention. You can trawl through the game and find moments where we could have done better but I think, with the preparation we had, I was keen to get a statement,” he said.
France coach Philippe Saint-Andre hinted as big changes for next week’s second Test.
“We took a lesson in rugby … we did poorly at the advantage line, in attack and defence, we missed too many tackles and we lost too many one-on-ones,” Saint-Andre said.
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