But, England were really woeful. Allegedly England have an advantage at the break-down because of "lax" SH refereeing. Australia won the penalty count... England have an alleged advantage at the scrum. The scrums creaked and groaned and went a bit this way, a bit that, but in the 63rd minute Australia shoved England off their own put in in dramatic style and won a penalty that stretched it out to 21-14.
Australia always had the edge in experience, and it showed. They had a clear edge in class too - England did have highlights: Armitage had a good to excellent game at full back, Croft looked good at blind-side. But, that was about it. Cipriani and Flutey had moments of brilliance, but mostly looked average and in Cipriani's case moderately often looked poor, particularly when kicking at the posts. I wouldn't be surprised to see him dropped for next week, and that might just have Flutey dropped with him if the thinking is about combinations.
Australia dominated the lineout, their defence looked strong and organised most of the time, and they won the battle of the breakdown too.
Comparing this match to yesterday's is always hard. Australia are a much better team than Canada. But Wales looked disjointed with what was largely their second choice team, England looked only marginally better with their first choice team.
The final point: England only conceded 10 penalties. Australia conceded a similar number. However, England conceded 8 in kickable positions and all but 1 was kicked. Australia I think only conceded 5 in kickable positions, and only 2 were scored (one wasn't even kicked and trying to trick George Smith into giving them an extra 10 metres was always destined to fail).
Can England improve enough to challenge South Africa and New Zealand? No, to be brutally honest. Can they improve enough by February to challenge in the Six Nations? Unlikely. I can see them losing to Wales, France and Ireland on the basis of what we've seen so far.
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