Easter furious after golden opportunity for victory is not taken

Furious Nick Easter warned heads will roll if England fail to beat Australia in Sydney next Saturday.

The Harlequins No 8 has run out of patience with learning the lessons from one painful defeat after the next.

Easter insisted the excuses ended on Saturday, when England blew their best chance of beating the Wallabies on Australian soil since the 2003 Rugby World Cup.

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England crushed the Australian scrum and earned two penalty tries – but they offered nothing else as the Wallabies' vastly-superior attacking game carried them to a 27-17 victory in Perth.

Easter insisted the time to deliver has arrived as he said: "I imagine there will be changes if we lose again next week because we can't go on like that.

"Our standards have got to be higher than that. I'm sick and tired of being on the wrong end of results. I don't want to be learning more lessons. I want us to be executing properly and winning games.

"I'm as annoyed as I have ever been after an England game, especially when we got it back to 21-17 and the game was ours for the taking.

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"From there top class and world-beating sides would have closed out the game."

Leeds Carnegie-bound hooker Steve Thompson compared England's defeat with boxing's famous 'Rumble In The Jungle' bout between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali..

"I have never played in an international game where one scrum had that sort of domination," said Thompson.

"It is a bit like the Rumble in the Jungle, a bit like the old Rope-a-dope. We got the dominance, the penalties and we can't ask more than that but we were ended up losing."