Pakistan, Sept. 12 -- Brock Purdy threw for 205 yards and three touchdowns as the San Francisco 49ers opened their season with an emphatic 27-7 win over the Los Angeles Rams on Friday in the NFL's first regular-season game in Australia.

Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford, the reigning NFL MVP, had no touchdowns and was pulled late in the fourth quarter, the Super Bowl favourites outclassed by their division rivals in front of a massive crowd of 100,021 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

The attendance on a local workday - the morning kick-off suiting a U.S. prime-time audience - was the seventh largest for a regular-season NFL game, and second only to the 49ers-Cardinals match-up at Mexico City's Azteca in 2005 (103,467) among internationa...