Record Wallabies win in Cardiff plunges Wales to worst losing run in history

CARDIFF, Wales (AP) — Australia condemned Wales to the worst losing run in its 143-year rugby history after a record 52-20 win under the Principality Stadium roof on Sunday.

Wales lost an unprecedented 11th consecutive test, dating to the Rugby World Cup quarterfinals 13 months ago.

The Wallabies are responsible for three of those defeats after July wins in Sydney and Melbourne. On Sunday, they scored their most points against Wales in Cardiff — they'd never passed 39 — and their most against Wales in 28 years.

Coming off the stunner against England, the Wallabies also are perfect halfway through their 40th anniversary grand slam tour, with Scotland and Ireland to come.

The victory by eight tries to two saw Australia zoom to 19-0, a Wales fightback by halftime, then Australia retake control while its center Samu Kerevi was off the field for a 20-minute red card in his 50th test.

Matt Faessler became the first Australia hooker to score a hat trick of tries, and man-of-the-match fullback Tom Wright matched his three in the final minute. Noah Lolesio converted six.

“That was an awesome 80-minute performance,” Wright told broadcaster TNT Sports. “Those are games you like to be a part of.”

The Wallabies were too clever and confident for a younger, rebuilding Wales. Bigger too. The Wallabies constantly got over the gain-line and were clinical.

After Kerevi's illegal head contact on Jac Morgan reduced Australia to 14 men, Wales, trailing 19-13, thought it had a sniff. But the Wallabies pack moved them out of sight on the scoreboard by engineering two converted tries in 10 minutes for Faessler. His hat trick was all maul tries.

Wales tried to regain the initiative by changing the front row, but it also replaced its best player, wing Tom Rogers.

And before Australia returned to 15 when Kerevi was replaced by rookie sensation Joseph Su'uali'i, Wright scored a 70-meter intercept try after teammate Rob Valetini stopped Christ Tshiunza dead.

“That performance hurts,” Wales coach Warren Gatland said. "We started off not great. We conceded some points. We got back into it. (Conceding) 21 points with a man advantage, it's not often that happens.

“You can get beaten by a better team, but we've probably let ourselves down when we needed to keep a cool head. It's using that experience to review as honestly as we can so we learn from it.”

Asked about his future, Wales' most successful coach said he wanted to carry on.

“There's so much negativity around the game. Whatever the best decision is, I would support. If that means (firing) me, I'm comfortable with that,” Gatland said. "I'm only human so I ask myself if it’s the right thing to do. But I’m happy doing it."

The game petered out with more tries to Wright and Len Ikitau, interrupted by a score for Wales' Ben Thomas.

It doesn’t get any easier for Wales. World champion South Africa comes to town next weekend.

Even knowing there was more unwanted history at stake, Wales couldn't have started much worse.

It was pinned in its own half for the first four minutes. Lock Adam Beard, its most capped player, limped off. Rogers somehow held up Kerevi over the line. That was the first 10 minutes.

Now Australia was well warmed up and merciless. Slick hands finished with a Wright dummy and score. A forced turnover finished with 120-kilogram lock Nick Frost striding 50 meters to the posts. Then the pack muscled Faessler over.

After 22 minutes, Australia led 19-0 and the crowd of 56,000 was quiet.

It took an unexpected Wales scrum shove to reanimate the crowd and No. 8 Aaron Wainwright, who tore his hamstring in July in Sydney, backed over the try-line with his third touch in the scoring move.

More cheers came for two aerial catches by Rogers — playing his first test in 15 months — a penalty from Wales' superior scrum, and two penalty kicks by Gareth Anscombe.

Wales was back in the game, only 19-13 behind at halftime.

Australia was forced to start the new half with prop James Slipper — his 142nd test, tied for fourth all-time — to subdue Wales tighthead Archie Griffin. But it didn't work. It was Wales' only edge on the field.

“We feel the same as everyone does at home,” Wales captain Dewi Lake said. “We're disappointed with the run that we're on, with the result today. We train hard, we work hard to win games but we're not there yet.”

AP rugby: https://apnews.com/hub/rugby

Australia's Will Skelton, center , is blocked by Wales' Christ Tshiunza, right and Wales' Gareth Anscombe during the Autumn Nations series rugby union match between Wales and Australia at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, Sunday, Nov. 17, 2024.(AP Photo/Rui Vieira)

Wales' Rhodi Williams kicks the ball to clear during the Autumn Nations series rugby union match between Wales and Australia at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, Sunday, Nov. 17, 2024.(AP Photo/Rui Vieira)

Australia's Noah Lolesio kicks a penalty during the Autumn Nations series rugby union match between Wales and Australia at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, Sunday, Nov. 17, 2024.(AP Photo/Rui Vieira)

Australia's Tom Wright scores a try during the Autumn Nations series rugby union match between Wales and Australia at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, Sunday, Nov. 17, 2024.(AP Photo/Rui Vieira)

Australia's Len Ikitau scores a try during the Autumn Nations series rugby union match between Wales and Australia at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, Sunday, Nov. 17, 2024.(AP Photo/Rui Vieira)

MANAUS, Brazil (AP) — Joe Biden toured the drought-shrunken waters of the Amazon River’s greatest tributary Sunday as the first sitting American president to set foot in the legendary rainforest, while the incoming Trump administration seems poised to scale back the U.S. commitment to combating climate change.

The massive Amazon region, which is about the size of Australia, stores huge amounts of the world’s carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that drives climate change when it's released into the atmosphere. But development is rapidly depleting the world's largest tropical rainforest, and rivers are drying up.

Flying over a stretch of the Amazon in a helicopter, Biden saw severe erosion, ships grounded in the Negro River tributary, and fire damage. He also passed over a wildlife refuge and the expansive waters where the Negro River joins the Amazon. He was joined by Carlos Nobre, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and expert on how climate change is harming the Amazon.

Biden met indigenous leaders — introducing his daughter and granddaughter to them — and visited a museum at the gateway to the Amazon as he looks to highlight his commitment to the preservation of the region. Three indigenous women shook maracas as part of a welcoming ceremony.

“I’m proud to become the first sitting president to visit the Amazon,” Biden said before he signing a U.S. proclamation designating Nov. 17 as International Conservation Day.

His administration announced plans last year for a $500 million contribution to the Amazon Fund, the most significant international cooperation effort to preserve the rainforest, primarily financed by Norway.

So far, the U.S. government said it has provided $50 million, and the White House announced Sunday an additional $50 million contribution to the fund.

“It’s significant for a sitting president to visit the Amazon. ... This shows a personal commitment from the president,” said Suely Araújo, former head of the Brazilian environmental protection agency and public policy coordinator with the nonprofit Climate Observatory. “That said, we can’t expect concrete results from this visit."

She doubts that a “single penny” will go to the Amazon Fund once Donald Trump is back in the White House.

The incoming Trump administration is highly unlikely to prioritize the Amazon or anything related to climate change. The Republican president-elect already said he would again pull out of the Paris agreement, a global pact forged to avert the threat of catastrophic climate change, after Biden recommitted to the accord.

Trump has cast climate change as a “hoax” and said he will eliminate energy efficiency regulations by the Biden administration.

Still, the Biden White House on Sunday announced a series of new efforts aimed at bolstering the Amazon and stemming the impact of climate change.

Among the actions is the launch of a finance coalition that looks to spur at least $10 billion in public and private investment for land restoration and eco-friendly economic projects by 2030, and a $37.5 million loan to an organization to support the large-scale planting of native tree species on degraded grasslands in Brazil.

Biden also plans to highlight that the U.S. is on track to reach $11 billion in spending on international climate financing in 2024, a sixfold increase from when he started his term.

The Amazon is home to Indigenous communities and 10% of Earth’s biodiversity. It also regulates moisture across South America. About two-thirds of the Amazon lies within Brazil, and scientists say its devastation poses a catastrophic threat to the planet.

The forest has been suffering two years of historic drought that have dried up waterways, isolated thousands of riverine communities and hindered riverine dwellers’ ability to fish. It's also made way for wildfires that have burned an area larger than Switzerland and choked cities near and far with smoke.

When Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office last year, he signaled a shift in environmental policy from his predecessor, far-right Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro prioritized agribusiness expansion over forest protection and weakened environmental agencies, prompting deforestation to surge to a 15-year high.

Lula has pledged “zero deforestation” by 2030, though his term runs through the end of 2026. Forest loss in Brazil’s Amazon dropped by 30.6% in the 12 months through July from a year earlier, bringing deforestation to its lowest level in nine years, according to official data released last week.

In that 12-month span, the Amazon lost 6,288 square kilometers (2,428 square miles), roughly the size of the U.S. state of Delaware. But that data fails to capture the surge of destruction this year, which will only be included in next year’s reading.

Despite the success in curbing Amazon deforestation, Lula’s government has been criticized by environmentalists for backing projects that could harm the region, such as paving a highway that cuts from an old-growth area and could encourage logging, oil drilling near the mouth of the Amazon River and building a railway to transport soy to Amazonian ports.

While Biden is the first sitting president in the Amazon, former President Theodore Roosevelt traveled to the region with the help of the American Museum of Natural History following his 1912 loss to Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt, joined by his son and naturalists, traversed roughly 15,000 miles, when the former president fell ill with malaria and suffered a serious leg infection after a boat accident.

Biden is making the Amazon visit as part of a six-day trip to South America, the first to the continent of his presidency. He traveled from Lima, Peru, where he took part in the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

After his stop in Manaus, he was heading to Rio de Janeiro for this year's Group of 20 leaders summit.

Sa Pessoa reported from Sao Paulo, and Long from Washington.

Marine One carrying President Joe Biden flies over the Amazon during a tour, Sunday, Nov. 17, 2024, in Manaus, Brazil. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Marine One carrying President Joe Biden flies over the Amazon during a tour, Sunday, Nov. 17, 2024, in Manaus, Brazil. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Marine One carrying President Joe Biden flies over the Amazon during a tour, Sunday, Nov. 17, 2024, in Manaus, Brazil. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Marine One carrying President Joe Biden flies over the Amazon during a tour, Sunday, Nov. 17, 2024, in Manaus, Brazil. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Activists from the "Amazônia de Pé" movement hold a banner with a message that reads: "World Leaders: The Amazon is watching" during a protest aimed at drawing the attention of leaders attending the upcoming G20 Summit on the Amazon Rainforest and the environmental crises, at Botafogo Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Sunday, Nov. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)

President Joe Biden, with granddaughter Natalie Biden, boards Air Force One, Sunday, Nov. 17, 2024, in Lima, Peru. Biden is traveling to Manaus, Brazil. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

FILE - A river borders an area that has been illegally deforested by land-grabbers and cattle farmers in an extractive reserve in Jaci-Parana, Rondonia state, Brazil, July 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Andre Penner, File)

President Joe Biden shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping before a bilateral meeting, Saturday, Nov. 16, 2024, in Lima, Peru. (Leah Millis/Pool Photo via AP)

President Joe Biden meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a bilateral meeting, Saturday, Nov. 16, 2024, in Lima, Peru. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)