Individual mistakes cost us - Johnson

England manager Martin Johnson blamed individual errors for the 28-14 defeat to Australia and was frustrated with his side's second-half display.

England held the momentum at half-time, having just scored a Nick Easter try to trail by a point, but the Wallabies added two more penalties in the second half in reply to England's one, before Adam Ashley-Cooper dived over the line in the right corner and Matt Giteau converted with 12 minutes to go. Johnson's men gave away 10 penalties in all, six of which were slotted over by fly-half Giteau and one by captain Stirling Mortlock.

"We didn't make them work hard enough to score 28 points," said Johnson, who skippered England to victory over Australia in the 2003 World Cup final. "We gave them eight penalties and they scored seven and that makes it very difficult."

He added: "We went a little bit off script. Guys in the heat of the battle went with instinct and what they do week in, week out instead of sticking to what were trying to achieve and that was the frustrating thing.

"If you're doing one thing and 14 guys are doing something else that's when you get turnovers and mistakes - and we made far too many of those to keep the pressure on.

"We've got to trust ourselves and back ourselves.

"At half-time we really were where we wanted to be but in the second half we just didn't keep the pressure on.

"There was a tremendous amount of restarts and they slowed the tempo of the game down.

"But, you know, they've won by 14 points and they know how to win Test matches. They'll be ecstatic and rightly so."