England Wheelchair beat Australia 86-18 in the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup semi-final at the WIN Entertainment Centre in Wollongong on Tuesday, November 10, 2026, reaching a fifth successive World Cup final. Sky Sports reports that England scored a record points total against Australia, and the defending champions will face France in the final on Friday.
FINAL: England 86, Australia 18
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The Final: England vs France, Friday, November 13, 2026, at the WIN Entertainment Centre, Wollongong
Kick-off: 7:45 p.m. AEDT (3:45 a.m. ET in Toronto)
England vs Australia Result: Record Total Before Half-Time
The England vs Australia result was settled long before the final whistle. Mason Billington, named player of the match, opened the scoring in the third minute, and by the 24th minute England led 30-0 after Rob Hawkins had scored twice and Joe Coyd had crossed as well. Diab Karim finally put the host nation on the board with a converted try, but Billington completed his hat-trick before half-time and England went into the break 40-6 ahead.
The second half followed the same pattern. Interchanges Jack Brown and Nathan Collins scored three tries between them in the opening 10 minutes after the restart, Hawkins struck twice more to put England out of reach, and late tries from Chris Haynes and captain Lewis King put the finishing touches on the win. Karim and Dan Anstey scored consolations for Australia just after the hour, but the game was already gone. The NRL’s official wrap calls it the Wheelaroos’ second-worst defeat to England, only marginally better than the 81-10 loss in the 2013 World Cup.
The try scorers tell the story of a team with finishers everywhere. Billington scored three, Hawkins five, Coyd and Brown two each, and Collins, Haynes and King one each, for 15 tries in all. Australia managed three, two from Karim and one from Anstey. England’s group run had already shown the same spread: 98-18 over Wales, 134-0 over the United States, and a 68-32 comeback win over Ireland, in which England recovered from 20-4 down to finish top of their pool unbeaten.
Hawkins Scores Five In 30-Point Night
Hawkins was the headline, even on a night when Billington took the player-of-the-match award. The winger scored five tries and finished with a 30-point performance, five tries and five conversions, in a semi-final against the host nation. It was the kind of night that fits the player he has become: Hawkins arrived in Wollongong as the reigning IRL Golden Boot winner, having taken the award for a second straight year after starring in England’s 2-0 Ashes series win over Australia, when he scored five tries and five conversions across the two matches.
Billington’s contribution was just as complete. The player-of-the-match award went to him for a hat-trick, seven tackle-breaks and 20 hit-ups, and he was the man who set the tone in the third minute and then sealed his hat-trick before half-time. Brown, who faced five of his former Queensland state teammates in the game, scored twice early in the second half to stretch the lead to 52-6 and open a clear passage to the final. “We were just so connected and Tom (coach Tom Coyd) told us before the game to play without shackles,” Brown told NRL.com. “We’ve got a few things still up our sleeve, we’ve got more to give.”
Captain Lewis King, who scored the last of England’s tries, was proud of the discipline behind the scoreline. “We were super disciplined in how we wanted to play. We had a game plan and we executed it. I am super proud,” King told Sky Sports. “When we meet France, it is always down to the finer details and margins, so I won’t be thinking about France, we will be focused on us.”
Australia Picked Apart On The Wings
Australia had no answer for England’s width. Wheelaroos coach Brett Clark was blunt about it afterwards. “We didn’t execute what we practised. I just don’t know what happened today, we just seemed to switch off so there’s no excuses,” Clark told NRL.com. “We got picked apart on the wings a bit and we weren’t communicating well. We knew they’d be strong there and we did things in training to counteract that but we didn’t execute.”
The hosts had arrived in the semi-final with reason to believe. Australia fielded what had been described as their strongest-ever squad, and they had beaten New Zealand 112-14 in their group opener. France had beaten them 69-34 in the final group match to top Pool B, but a home semi-final against England was still a real chance at a final. Instead England scored 30 points before Australia had an answer, and the hosts were chasing the game from the 24th minute on.
Australia now face Ireland in the play-off for third and fourth place on Friday at 5:15 p.m. AEDT, the curtain-raiser to the final at the same venue. Ireland reached the semi-finals for the first time in the nation’s history, and their run is the tournament’s other story: player-coach Phil Roberts joked that his side would have finished ninth in an eight-team tournament in 2022, so far behind were they then, and most of his squad is under 27, so the group can be kept together for 2030.
France Again In A Fifth Straight Final
England against France in a Wheelchair World Cup final is the game’s default setting. This is the fourth successive World Cup in which the two nations have met in the final, and England’s fifth successive final appearance. England won the title in 2008 and again in 2022, when Tom Halliwell crashed over with three minutes left to beat France 28-24 at Manchester Central in front of a record crowd of 4,526 for the sport. France won the title in 2013 and 2017, beating England in both finals.
France booked their place in the earlier semi-final on Tuesday, beating Ireland 82-26 with 15 tries to five. Dany Denuwelaere was player of the match with six tries, even after France had rested Jeremy Bourson, their two-time player of the match from the pool games. France are undefeated in the 2026 tournament, with wins over Scotland, New Zealand and Australia to top Pool B before facing Ireland, and they are the two-time winners chasing a third title of their own.
England will need the same discipline King praised on Tuesday, and more. France are the only side in the tournament who have lived with England at this level, and the last three finals between these two nations have all been decided by fine margins. For Canadian viewers the final is a late-night one: 7:45 p.m. in Wollongong on Friday, November 13 is 3:45 a.m. Eastern in Toronto. On the evidence of Tuesday, the alarm is worth it: England have reached every Wheelchair World Cup final there has ever been, and on Friday they can win back-to-back titles for the first time.
