AUSTRALIA face being without influential scrum-half Will Genia for their meeting with Wales at the Principality Stadium, but Rhys Webb knows the visitors have plenty of talent in reserve.

Genia’s French club Stade Francais have refused to release the 72-times capped Wallaby ahead of the game in Cardiff this Saturday.

A knee injury and his involvement in the Rugby Championship has limited the 28-year-old to only a handful of games for Stade since joining after last year’s World Cup.

Genia’s absence this weekend comes as a huge blow for the Aussies but a welcome boost for Wales given his form against them in the past.

However, Ospreys and Wales number nine Webb is aware that the side ranked three in the world have quality in their squad to cover Genia’s non-appearance.

“I’ve heard that Will Genia is out, which is a massive loss for Australia,” said Webb.

“He’s a world-class number nine, but they have got experience with Nick Phipps coming in, who will probably start. He’s a top player as well.

“They’ve had their injuries, but they have got a lot of talent across the board.

“They had a tremendous Rugby Championship. If you take New Zealand out of the equation, they pretty much won the championship.

“We know how dangerous they are. Some of the individuals they’ve got in their team can create stuff from wherever on the field.”

Genia has often been the scourge of Wales and Webb has experienced the heartache of a narrow defeat to the men in green and gold before.

“Obviously there have been plenty of opportunities against Australia, but we certainly haven’t been thinking about it these last two weeks,” he added.

“We have come together, it is a very happy camp, and training has been intense. We are just going to concentrate on ourselves.

“We have learnt from our tour to New Zealand and talked about what we needed to do better.

“We know what we need to do, and we know we need to play for 80 minutes.”