Joe Schmidt's tenure as Australia's head coach ended with a victory on Saturday, with the Wallabies beating Italy 57-10 in the Nations Championship in Perth to end a six-test losing streak.
The Australians scored six tries to one in the first half, with lock Josh Canham crossing for two, and led 38-5 to set up the win. Canham scored his third try in the 52nd minute, picking up at the base of a ruck metres from Italy's tryline and burrowing over for a 45-10 lead.
"When you've done that a few times, you've got to learn from those experiences, and I felt we did tonight," Schmidt said. "We got far enough in front that it wasn't really going to matter if we weren't as good in the second half, but there was some good stuff in there."
Canham crossed in the fourth minute and fullback Tom Wright and hooker Brandon Paenga-Amosa also scored in the opening 12 minutes; Canham, prop Angus Bell and centre Len Ikitau all scored in the 15 minutes before the break. Canham and Billy Pollard scored in the second half before replacement back Ben Donaldson dived over in the 80th minute after a rampaging run from backrower Rob Valetini.
Captain Michele Lamaro scored Italy's only points of the first half with a try in the 20th minute, and Montanna Ioane crossed just after halftime; the Italians had a try disallowed for a knock-on in-goal in the 75th on video review.
Italy ended the first phase of the Nations Championship without a win. "Gutted. Obviously very disappointed with the result and the performance we put in," Lamaro said. "We played a very good first half against the All Blacks last week, but apart from that we've been pretty poor."
A wrestle between players in the 66th minute spilled into the technical area and resulted in a red card for Marco Riccioni. Schmidt, who announced his departure last year to make way for Les Kiss, thanked the rugby public: "Thank you for sticking with us. We've just had massive support, and it makes a difference to the players."
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