Australia 33 Canada 0

Australia eased through to the next phase of the World Rugby Classic with a comprehensive victory over Canada.

The Wallabies ran in five tries with Ipolito Fenukitau grabbing two and Tim Walsh, Danny Flannery and Marco Caputo the others.

In truth, Australia could, and should, have had a least two more, with Adam Harley the biggest culprit, dropping the ball when already over the line.

Canada, meanwhile, made little headway in a scrappy affair and came away without scoring a single point.

"It was pretty scrappy from both sides," said Australia skipper John Ross. "I think it was always going to be a physical game against Canada. They were good and they hit hard, and to their credit they really scrapped it out to the end.

"The heat contributed to a lot of dropped ball and guys got tired, but overall I think we can be pretty pleased with that. I think the guys are tired, they were a bit slow to the ball, we may have been a little bit slow to release and got caught a couple of times, which is fair.

"I think we've got a bit to work do, we've got a reasonable back line that we can play with and the forwards can do alright there. But we're very happy to have kept them out, and we're looking forward to playing South Africa."

Like many sides coming to the tournament, Australia have had little time to prepare with little more than an hour on the training pitch, but Ross refused to blame that for the stop-start nature of his side's performance.

"We had a 45-minute training run on the way here in New York," he said. "And we probably had about 30 minutes yesterday to run through some lineouts and things like that.

"But we have guys coming from everywhere, Cairns, Perth, all across Australia, so it's a fairly convoluted preparation. But at this level most of the guys have played pretty good footy so it's just a manner of remembering how to do it, and getting back out there."

Harley actually dropped the ball before a point had been scored, but once Australia crossed the line through Walsh, they always seemed like they would have too much ability for Canada.

Flannery grabbed his side's second try after taking a switch pass from Matthew Pini, and scored Fenukitau the third moments into the second half when he took a clever flick inside from David Knox and crashed over. Walsh converted all three and at 21-0 it was merely a case of when and not if the Aussies would score again.

While Canada were struggling to put a series of phases together, Knox was getting into his stride and a clever kick through set up the fourth try, with Caputo dropping down on the ball.

Australia wrapped things up moments later when a well-worked move off the top of the lineout saw centre Paul Horton race away down the sideline, and he offloaded to Fenukitau who crossed unmolested.