Wallabies five-eighth Bernard Foley has been hailed as world class and the heartbeat of the Australian attack following a starring role in their Spring Tour-opening thrashing of Wales.

Foley had a hand in all that was good about the Wallabies’ 32-8 victory at Millennium Stadium on Saturday (Sunday AEDT) – whether it be deft midfield chips for Israel Folau, inside balls to create breaks for Reece Hodge or his own 40 metre sprint for a well-earned second-half try.

In what was his best performance since playing a starring role as the Wallabies reached last year’s World Cup final, Foley earned man-of-the-match honours as Michael Cheika’s men cleared their first hurdle in search of the grand slam.

“He’s the guy the team’s really looking to at the moment for a lot of calls and how we’re going to play the game,” said halfback Nick Phipps, after what was also one of his finest performances for the Wallabies.

“You can see now after a couple of years in the Wallaby jersey, he’s really starting to be a world class player and it’s pleasing for a lot of us to see having been part of that journey with him.

“He really enjoys having that opportunity to run himself but we’re all quite lucky to have some world-class players outside him; Tevita (Kuridrani), Izzy (Folau) running off him short all the time and then some strike players out wide.

“He’s in the perfect opportunity to direct the play, it’s good he’s scoring some great tries and setting them up, but there’s a lot of things you don’t see behind the scenes.

“He’s always directing traffic, chatting, talking behind play telling us where to go.”

Foley was quick to deflect praise onto his forward pack, who set the platform for the likes of he, Phipps, Hodge and Folau to run riot.

But he disagreed he had a point to prove having been shifted away from his preferred No.10 role this year – when he was tested out at inside centre as coach Michael Cheika tweaked his team.

“Definitely no personal goals or ambitions (on this tour), I’m just trying to go out there and lead this team, set the forwards up, allow them to get us on the front foot as we’ve done in the last couple of weeks,” Foley said.

“I’ve thought our forwards have done excellently.”