Australia have opened their Rugby World Cup campaign with a comfortable 35-15 victory over Georgia at the Stade de France.
The match had been tipped as a possible banana skin for the Wallabies, ranked just two places above their opponents in the world rankings heading into the tournament, but they made a quick start to avoid any major scares en route to the bonus-point triumph.
The win - Eddie Jones's first since returning as head coach in January - puts Australia in a promising position to qualify from Pool C, although upcoming matches against Fiji and Wales will still be pivotal.
Ben Donaldson was the star of the show for the two-time World Cup winners, chalking up 25 points from full-back to help keep Georgia at arm's length.
Australia went into the tournament off the back of five successive defeats over the Rugby Championship and World Cup warm-up Tests, but they started like a team in flying form.
Jordan Petaia opened the scoring after just two minutes, before Mark Nawaqanitawase touched down to put the Wallabies 12-3 ahead inside 10 minutes.
© Reuters
From that point on it was the Donaldson show, with the full-back scoring three penalties to extend Australia's lead to 21-3 at half time.
Georgia gave themselves hope when Luka Ivanishvili touched down early in the second half, and they squandered a big chance to close the gap even further when a promising line-break came to nothing.
It proved to be doubly damaging as Donaldson scored his first try of the contest moments later, and his second took his personal tally for the day up to 25 as well as taking Australia out of sight.
Beka Gigashvili's late score gave Georgia another positive to take from their performance as they reduced the final deficit to 20 points, but they will likely need to pull off at least one shock against either Wales or Fiji to stand any chance of making it out of the pool stages for the first time.
Georgia will expect to get on the board when they face Portugal next on September 23, while Australia take on Fiji next Sunday.
No Data Analysis info
