Frank Hadden says the loss of Nathan Hines was not a factor

"We haven't had the best three weeks in terms of preparation, but there's no excuses and we believed we were capable of doing something special," he said.

"Australia came back at us very well after our excellent opening and our accuracy wasn't quite there.

"But I still believe we have made progress over the last three weeks."

Interview: Scotland coach Frank Hadden

Interview: Australia's Stephen Larkham

Hadden refused to point to the Nathan Hines saga as a factor in the defeat.

The lock was withdrawn on Friday owing to confusion surrounding the complaint of foul play made against him while playing for Perpignan against Stade Francais.

Alastair Kellock took the Australian-born forward's place in the starting line-up while James Hamilton was released from Leicester duty to take his place on the bench.

"Obviously we'd rather it hadn't happened and it was one of a number of problems that we have had to deal with over the past few weeks - there have been a number of injuries," said Hadden.

"But we're no making any excuses, that's what happens in rugby. We just have to find better ways of dealing with it.

We came out strong in the first 10 minutes, but you have to keep that up for 80 minutes Hugo Southwell Scotland full-back

"We'd obviously far prefer to have these problems now rather than in the World Cup and we'll go back and look at how we've dealt with them and hopefully come up with better solutions next time.

"We're just thankful to Leicester for coming up trumps and releasing James Hamilton.

"He was down to play in their side against Wasps this weekend but we are grateful to Pat Howard (Leicester coach) who agreed to release James for the game."

Hugo Southwell felt Scotland had let themselves down.

"To lose by such a large margin is disappointing," said the full-back. "We came out strong in the first 10 minutes, but you have to keep that up for 80 minutes.

"We've got to look at ourselves and put in some bigger hits."