Mixed emotions from England camp

England captain Steve Borthwick praised his team's defensive efforts following their 14-28 loss to Australia and blamed his team's penalty count for the loss.

England captain Steve Borthwick praised his team's defensive efforts following their 14-28 loss to Australia and blamed his team's penalty count for the loss.

The Saracens lock Borthwick said that England strayed from their original gameplan which ultimately cost them dearly.

“I think we worked very hard on the defensive side and were tremendously competitive, but we need to sharpen up in certain areas where we didn't deliver today (Saturday),” said Borthwick.

“We went away from our gameplan at certain times against an excellent side who've been playing together for longer than we have.

“Clearly we can't give away that many penalties in the kickable zone. We know that and it's unfortunate we gave away too many.

“I am disappointed but there are areas to improve and we'll work on them.

“There were some positives moving forward but we lost the game without being outplayed and credit to Australia for what they did.”

Former England captain and Prop Phil Vickery said that he wasn't sure how he felt.

“I've got mixed emotions really. We didn't play particularly well at certain stages but did create a fair few chances,” said Vickery.

“It was an up-and-down display, which is the kind of stage our team is at at the moment. The Aussies played some clever stuff and deserved their win.

“It now all about backing ourselves and moving forward. We have to learn from this harsh lesson – we're disappointed. We'll be working on all areas of our scrum this week, plus looking at who the referee will be and what his interpretation will be at the breakdown.”

Flanker Tom Rees of London Wasps said that even though England lost there were still some positives to be taken from the match.

“There's a strange feeling in the dressing room – we lost but we know we weren't soundly beaten. In many respects we lost a game that we could and should have won. It's very frustrating,” said Rees.

“We have to take the positives out of the fact we created plenty of half-chances. We need to keep our enthusiasm up for next week and I'm sure we will. We have to learn from this and learn quickly.”

An area where England are normally strong is at the scrum and Sale Sharks prop Andrew Sheridan said that England's difficulty at the scrum slowed the game down.

“There was a lot of mess and resets in the scrum today, which was disappointing,” he said.

“It spoiled the rhythm and slowed down the game. I don't expect our scrummaging to be too much of a problem going forward – however there are things we obviously need to go away and work on.”

“It was a frustrating day for us and we'll study the tapes closely over the next couple of days to work out exactly what went wrong.

“After all the hype and build up this week, we're left flat and disappointed. We managed to get up a good bit of momentum at times, which is something we can focus on to move forward. We created the opportunities but just didn't capitalise,” added Sheridan.