Australia head coach Dave Rennie has urged the Wallabies to tighten their penalty count after suffering a 32-15 defeat to England at Twickenham.
Australia conceded 18 penalties in comparison to England’s nine, allowing the hosts to boss both possession and territory en route to an eighth straight win in the head-to-head series.
Freddie Steward scored an early try for England but James O’Connor’s right boot kept Australia in touch, with the fly-half kicking four first-half penalties.
His fifth reduced the gap to just one point early in the second half but England edged clear through two penalties from Owen Farrell and Marcus Smith and a late try from Jamie Blamire.
Australia have now lost both of their Autumn Nations Series matches and Rennie admits they need to improve before they head to Wales next week.
“We got hammered with the penalty count, our possession and territory stats were in the 60s in favour of England. We made too many errors and dumb penalties, so we are frustrated by the result,” he said.
“I thought we showed a lot of character to come in at 16-12 down at half-time, I thought we fought hard.
“We could have put them under the heat but we were not good enough tonight. We have to be better going forwards.
“We prepared really well, one of our best weeks. We went in with clarity and confidence but we turned too much ball over and made individual mistakes, it put us under pressure.
“It is exciting to be here, we are embracing it and it is where we want to be. We have to be accurate, we don’t get too many opportunities at this level.”
Australia were down to 14 men late in the first half due to a sin-bin for winger Tom Wright but went in at the break with their tails up after Nic White made a sensational tackle to prevent Jamie George from scoring a try and O’Connor kicked a penalty to move the score to 16-12.
They were unable to build on that momentum but Rennie insists they have a strong platform to build from.
“There is plenty of character in this group but we what we need to do is score points off the back of that defence,” he said. “It is not through a lack of effort, we just have to be better on match days.
“England are a quality side. From our point of view, we were not able to pressure them for long enough.
“They are very well coached and have some good depth. We were below our best but still in the fight late on.
“You need to credit England, they strangled us. We knew we had to play well and we didn’t.”
