England 14 Australia 20: Lack of guile and calm sees England fall short

It was during the last embers of Saturday’s QBE international against Australia and, despite an abundance of pressure, the Red Rose was somehow still 20-14 behind when Mathieu Raynal awarded them yet another penalty.

They duly kicked to the corner, turning down another three points and instead looking for the try which would dig them out of a mire in which they had hopelessly placed themselves.

You could not fault the optimism; there was no thought about possibly narrowing the deficit and then eliciting another foul to level the match.

But England secured the line-out only to, maddeningly, fail to correctly attach their driving maul, conceding a scrum and prompting an audible sigh of resignation from the majority of an 81,361 Twickenham crowd.

It was symptomatic of their afternoon – poor, basic execution – and, really, it should have come as no surprise.

Many observers believed the decisive moment came around the hour mark when, with that six-point deficit already set, captain Chris Robshaw instructed Flood three times in succession to ignore penalty chances and kick for the corner.

On each occasion they were denied, initially by excellent Australian defence and then, when No 8 Thomas Waldrom did finally twist free from the line-out, his handling deserted him and he spilt the ball over the line.

However, there was still a quarter of the game to go and there would be more opportunities, so, perhaps more telling was Ben Youngs’s decision to take a quick tap in the 68th minute when three points were waiting.

Australia’s defence had already defiantly proved their mettle but the replacement scrum-half still made the snap decision to test them again.

The resolute Wallabies – unrecognisable from the feeble side embarrassed 33-6 in Paris a week earlier – held firm once more with England, again, blundering at the crucial moment as they edged nearer the line.

Effectively Flood should never have been in that position where he needed to find seven points in five minutes but these are the fine lines of Test match rugby and, this morning, England will realise they are worryingly on the wrong side.

“We let ourselves down with our execution,” admitted scrum-half Danny Care, the former Leeds Tykes star who was one of the few to offer any bright spark for the hosts.

“We know we have to be better next week against South Africa.

“We had them (Australia) and after 60 minutes really should have scored a couple more tries.

“That was the story of the game really; we weren’t as clinical as we wanted to be.

“We knew we wouldn’t have as many chances as we did against Fiji and we knew we needed to take them so it’s a very frustrated changing room as we think if we could have scored then we could have pushed on and won by 10 or so points.

“Fair play to Australia. They defended really well, played the ref well, slowed our ball down and threw men into the breakdown.

“But we need to realise we need to win these big games against Australia at home. These opportunities don’t come around very often.”

It was perhaps surprising that Lancaster withdrew the ebullient Yorkshireman with 20 minutes to go. If anyone was going to bring some cutting edge to the side it was the Harlequins dynamo.

They certainly were not going to find any inspiration in the midfield where England are crying out for a centre who can at least, like Australia’s excellent Ben Tapuai, put on a little footwork to cause some level of deception.

If not, they need a footballing brain to add some sort of ingenuity but realistically they have neither and the pairing of Manu Tuilagi and Brad Barritt is too one-dimensional.

Admittedly, Tuiliagi was probably the only England player who could have finished off the move that resulted in their sole try in the 39th minute.

His power allowed him to stretch out of tackles after Care’s swiftly-taken penalty had injected some pace into a rare moment of home fluidity.

That sent England in at 14-11, Flood having kicked three penalties, but they would emerge from that frustrating second period pointless.

Australia, meanwhile, had feared going three games without a try for the first time since the 19th century.

However, they put aside that concern when winger Nick Cummins jubilantly scored his first international try in the 35th minute after a raiding Nick Phipps clinically exposed England lock Tom Palmer in a wide defensive position.

There had been big question marks about the Australian scrum given the length of their injury list, but that more than held its own to set the foundation for this wrestling back of the Cook Cup while in fly-half Kurtley Beale they had a player who offered more variety and posed more questions than anyone in the England contingent.

His shallow midfield kicks dropping just over the England defence caused continual problems and the hosts never adapted to the tactic while full-back Berrick Barnes – who kicked 15 points – was similarly composed.

But it was the imposing display of openside Michael Hooper which generated most carnage.

He was a real nuisance at the breakdown, regularly slowing down Lancaster’s side, but as Care conceded: “I don’t think the breakdown was refereed brilliantly.

“When we did get some quick ball, we caused them some problems and that was the frustrating thing – the gaps were there, but we couldn’t get it out quick enough.

“Our rucking is something we definitely need to work on for South Africa.”

That, and the small matter of bringing some added finesse and calm.

England: Goode; Ashton, Tuilagi, Barritt (Farrell 74), Sharples (Brown 60) Flood, Care (B Youngs 60); Marler (Wood 50), T Youngs (Paice 74), Cole, Palmer (Launchbury 54), Parling, Johnson (Vunipola 50) Robshaw, Waldron.

Australia: Barnes; Cummins, Ashley-Cooper, Tapuai, Ioane (Mitchell 70); Beale, Phipps; Robinson, Polota-Nau (Moore 40) Alexander (Kepu 71), Timani, Sharpe, Dennis (Gill 77), Hooper, Palu.

Referee: Romain Poite (France).