LYON, France - Australia's 91-3 demolition of Japan in their opening rugby World Cup match today has been soured by an injury to replacement wing Mark Gerrard.
The Wallabies scored 13 unanswered tries to demolish Japan but may have lost Gerrard for the remainder of the tournament.
Gerrardwas assisted from the field after twisting his knee when he landed awkwardly after his first run with the ball.
Australia coach John Connolly said Gerrard had been taken to hospital for scans but the early diagnosis was not good.
"We're hoping for the best but we're expecting the worse," Connolly told a news conference. "He still doesn't know how it happened but he said he heard a click in his knee."
Connolly said a decision on a possible replacement for Gerrard would not be made until the results of the scan were known but the injury had taken some of the gloss off the team's impressive first-up performance.
"We haven't played for seven weeks so we expected to be a bit rusty in the first half but I thought we got it together in the second half," Connolly said.
"We're satisfied with our performance. We went out there to play a specific way and that's what we did.
"We wanted to give our forwards a good workout and practice our rolling mauls and we did all that.
Japan captain Takamichi Sasaki was also taken to hospital for scans on his knee, threatening his chances of playing in their next game against Fiji.
Coach John Kirwan said he was pleased with his team's performance in the first half, when they held the Australians to 23-3, and hoped they would learn from their mistakes in the second half when the Wallabies raised the tempo.
"Nobody likes to lose like that but I don't have an issue with the result. The most important thing for me was the first 50 minutes," Kirwan said.
"We're trying to build a team. We have a lot of young players and that was an important learning curve for them.
