I hardly know where to start. Like every other England fan, I'm so disappointed. A depressing scoreline like that is hard to take. We were embarrassed in this game, there's no getting away from that. Words fail me in terms of the scoreline, the way it spiralled out of control in the second half. England will get absolutely savaged in the papers out here. The Australian journalists will slaughter them and I actually hope our lads have a good read. Those kind of things hurt, and they should. But that will be a huge deal of motivation. There are a lot of players there who have played nowhere near their club form. The challenge of international rugby is to get a group of people together who want to play for each other and show the right amount of desire and attitude. Unfortunately, we lacked in that department and it cost us badly.
 England offered little going forward |
I don't think Tony Smith has too many options, but there will inevitably be some changes after a defeat like that. Next week's game against New Zealand is an opportunity to give a rest to some of the players who didn't play well against Australia and see if anybody in the rest of the squad can come in and show the right attributes. I'm not saying it will be easy to turn it around, but that's the job for them now. England need to show more desire and the right attitude. Belief becomes an issue, but what you have to do is reinforce the ideas you went out there with. They haven't become bad players overnight. When things go against you at the highest level, they can go badly wrong, very quickly. We started badly against Australia and never recovered. Mark Calderwood didn't catch a high ball early on, so we spent the first 10 minutes defending in our own half. There's no doubt the way you start games sets the tone and gives you the enthusiasm to go on. For 20 minutes in the first half I thought we looked a serious threat, but there's no doubt our cohesion and execution was nowhere near the level of the Australians. But it's important we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. I'm convinced England still have a huge role to play at this World Cup. However disappointed the fans are, the players will be feeling much worse. I've been in dressing rooms after defeats against Australia and it's vital that everybody stays together. Tony has to put Humpty Dumpty back together again after a serious fall and I'm confident he can do that with the players he has.
 Billy Slater was electrifying at full-back |
We have to recognise that England were playing an outstanding team who executed superbly. Their half-backs were brilliant again, almost untouchable. They lost Johnathan Thurston but Scott Prince made a seamless transition into the team. England barely laid a finger on him or Darren Lockyer all game. Compare that to our halves, who looked a little bit disorientated most of the time. At full-back, Billy Slater's speed is just awesome and his try from 90m out epitomised what makes this Kangaroos side something special. Danny McGuire put in a kick and Greg Inglis collected it. In England, a player in that situation may well have fallen on the ball because they are thinking in defensive terms, but Inglis was instantly alive to the possibilities and released Slater. Despite the scoreline, there were a couple of positives. I thought Rob Burrow showed on a couple of occasions that he can worry Australia out of dummy-half, and I thought James Roby was super, just lacking support at times. But we still have the opportunity to play Australia again and prove that we weren't as bad as this result suggests. We shouldn't just focus on one result, although we've seen one team that is head and shoulders above everybody else. Brian Noble was speaking to BBC Sport's Phil Harlow
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