Australia vs. Fiji Prediction on September 17, 2023

Match info

Australia and Fiji will face each other in the Oceania derby valid for the second round of Pool C of the 2023 Rugby World Cup for men. The two national teams enter the encounter, which will start on Sunday, September 17, at Stade Geoffroy-Guichard in Saint-Étienne, France, at 5:45 p.m. local time in a different mood: the former after an opening victory and the latter after suffering a setback.

Meeting statistics

Australia will play Fiji in their second game of the 2023 Rugby World Cup. Fiji defeated England at Twickenham last month in a warm-up game, which should serve as a warning for the “Wallabies“. Eddie Jones, who was fired as England’s head coach and appointed as Australia’s head coach, will thus have an extra drive for the match. Although his second term at the helm of Australia hasn’t been very successful thus far, his team’s triumph over Georgia on the tournament’s opening matchday gave him his first win. Fiji narrowly lost to Wales in their opening match at the WC in France (26-32), but it was the game of the tournament thus far. Later this week, Jones will announce his team. The same applies to Simon Raiwalui, the head coach of Fiji.

With five points each, Australia is tied atop Pool C with Wales heading into the second round of World Cup matches where they are favorites in the eyes of the best mobile bookmakers. Fiji is third due to the two bonus points they earned in their loss to Wales. The tournament’s second matchday (which begins on Thursday) has eight games, with this one being the seventh on the schedule. The venue for this event is the renowned Stade Geoffroy-Guichard in Saint-Étienne. It has a 42,152 capacity and is the oldest stadium being utilized for the Rugby World Cup in 2023. Welshman Andrew Brace is in command of the refereeing, and Jaco Peyper and Chris Busby serve as his assistants. Brace was criticized for his performance in England’s Autumn Nations Cup match against France in 2020, but he’s now a regular for important Test matches.

Head-to-head encounters

The “Flying Fijians“ haven’t bothered Australia recently. In actuality, Fiji last defeated the “Wallabies“ in 1954. The World Cup history between these two sides is entirely in Australia’s favor, too. Australia defeated Fiji 39-21 in the 2019 World Cup. Looking at earlier head-to-head matches, Australia prevailed 55-12 in the 2007 World Cup and 28-13 in the 2015 edition.

Match analytics

We advise using the good old spread for this match: Handicap +7 for Fiji. They are a good squad, despite being inferior to Australia, and if you ask us, they won’t lose by such a wide margin—at least not by more than 7 points. PlayUp offers odds of 2.08 for this.