CANBERRA—Teenage fullback James O'Connor celebrated his first full test appearance with a hat-trick of tries in Australia's 31-8 win over Italy on Saturday.
The 18-year-old made a dream start to his first run-on match for the Wallabies, scoring his opening try in the fourth minute then crossing twice more.
"I'm pretty stoked with that," said O'Connor, who made his test debut as a replacement on last year's end of season tour of Europe but was starting for the first time.
"I was just in the right place at the right time to get a few opportunist's tries.
"It was an awesome experience...I got dumped on my head with my first touch of the ball."
Flyhalf Matt Giteau scored a fortuitous try in the first half after the ball ricocheted off his knee, as well as converting three of the five Australian tries.
The Wallaby skipper Stirling Mortlock barged his way over in the second half to snuff out any chances of an Italian fightback after the tourists had scored eight unanswered points either side of the break through their Antipodean recruits.
Australian-born fullback Luke McLean opened their account with a penalty on the stroke of halftime then New Zealand-born wing Kaine Robertson charged over two minutes after the re-start when he combined with Craig Gower, a former Australian rugby league international also on debut.
"We wouldn't have come close to scoring without someone like that (Gower) taking it to the line," Italy coach Nick Mallett said. "It was a lovely little switch with Kaine Robertson and it's just a pity we couldn't have given him more opportunities.
"When he gets front-foot ball ... he put our lock into a half gap once so he's a guy we really appreciate and we're very fortunate to have him."
The Italians had never beaten Australia in any of their previous 10 encounters and were given little real hope of ending their drought on a cold winter's night at Canberra Stadium after finishing bottom of this year's European Six Nations.
The Australians warmed up for the match with a comprehensive 55-7 win over the Barbarians last weekend and looked set for another lopsided win when O'Connor strolled in untouched after three and a half minutes only to be stalled by some resilient Italian defending.
O'Connor scored his second touchdown after half an hour then his third midway through the second term, wriggling through two defenders to secure Australia's win.
"They (Italy) are very good in defence and likewise at the breakdown," Mortlock said. "They are very good at slowing your momentum down and we struggled with that in the first half.
"It's very difficult to get your rhythm against them. Second half we were a little more direct and made some in-roads."
The two teams meet again in Melbourne next week for their second and final test.