Pearls return to the top of the world with a win that buries the demon soft he Gold Coast

The wait is over. Australia’s women’s rugby team is top of the world again.

After a rollercoaster ride in the wake of their 2016 Olympic triumph, the Pearls exacted revenge on Fiji to seal Commonwealth Games gold for the first time.

After being wiped from the Tokyo Olympics in the quarter-finals by Fiji, and toppled by the tiny island nation in their final group game in Coventry on Saturday, Australia showed little mercy in a onesided final.

Revenge has been a dirty word in the Australian camp, but victory must have tasted extra sweet after the 22-12 win.

All weekend Australia’s men and women have appeared enemy No.1 at Coventry Stadium, with rival teams winning support of the vocal – and boozed-up – punters.

And Fiji had made Australia do everything the hard way following the Saturday loss – which sent Tim Walsh’s team into a nightmare semi-final clash against New Zealand.

Australia dug deep on that occasion, fighting back to produce a 17-12 win on the back of a Maddison Levi hat-trick.

And the final, which immediately followed the men’s team’s tough defeat in the bronze-medal playoff against New Zealand, on paper looked just as tricky.

But it took little more than a minute for the pro-Fiji chants to be silenced, with Faith Nathan opening the scoring.

The 22-year-old former touch football star danced through defenders minutes later to secure a first-half double as Australia looked to bury the demons of their 2018 Gold Coast Games final nightmare.

When Madison Ashby walked through non-existent Fijian defence seconds before halftime to open up a 17-point lead, the memories of that late fade were long gone.

Teagan Levi was the find of the tournament, and the gold result would not have felt complete without a try to the multicode superstar. She scored her 10th early in the second half.