Wallabies captain Will Genia says there are no excuses for Australia delivering anything less than a quality performance against the Springboks on Saturday night in Perth despite the late setback of losing hooker Stephen Moore.

Injuries have hit the Wallabies hard this season, and when Moore broke down with a low grade hamstring problem at training on Thursday, coach Robbie Deans was forced into yet another last-minute reshuffle with Waratahs hooker Tatafu Polota-Nau added to the starting team.

James Horwill and David Pocock, both Wallaby captains, head the list of high-profile players sitting in the casualty ward for Australia with star backs James O’Connor and Pat McCabe also unavailable.

Australia were crushed by the All Blacks in back-to-back Bledisloe Cup losses to start the Rugby Championship, but Genia said the Wallabies haven’t blamed injuries for their poor performances and aren’t about to start against South Africa.

“You’ve got blokes coming in who can do as good a job as those who are missing,” said Genia.

“Pocock is obviously world class and so is Stephen but you’ve got Taf (Polota-Nau) coming in who brings a very physical edge to the game and I think (rookie) Michael Hooper made 30 odd tackles last week as well so you get work rate from those blokes and effort.

“It’s been a great feeling amongst the group, the last few weeks have been very disappointing in terms of the result and we said in the build up to those weeks that we prepared well and trained well but didn’t put the performance on the park.

“That’s very much something we’re looking forward to doing is transitioning what we do on the training paddock onto the field and that’s the big challenge for us tomorrow and hopefully we can do it.”

Australia are looking to extend their unbeaten run against South Africa to five matches with victory at Patersons Stadium.

The Springboks will leapfrog the Wallabies into second place on the world rankings if they win on Saturday.