Lonergan calls for Wallabies bounce-back after 'super disappointing' England thrashing

Ryan Lonergan has called on the Wallabies to deliver a sharp response when they face Scotland in Edinburgh this weekend, after a 45-22 defeat to England left the squad searching for answers ahead of the fifth Nations Championship round.

The scrum-half spoke to reporters the morning after Australia reviewed the Twickenham loss — their third consecutive Test in which they have conceded at least 43 points. “Everyone’s super disappointed with how we showed up on the weekend and I’m sure there will be a good bounce back from the boys,” Lonergan said.

The defeat extended Australia’s losing streak to three games, following a two-nil Bledisloe Cup series sweep by New Zealand. It represents a significant dip in form for a side that had won four and drawn one under head coach Les Kiss before the All Blacks series began. Kiss took charge after Joe Schmidt’s final game — a commanding 47-point win over Italy in Perth in July.

Lonergan was measured in his assessment of where the Wallabies fell short at Twickenham. He slotted a 12th-minute penalty but England controlled the first half, with Max Jorgensen intercepting a pass to score just before the break and effectively kill the contest. Filipo Daugunu and Jeremy Williams crossed for second-half tries, but captain Harry Wilson acknowledged at full-time it was “too little, too late.”

“I think it’s easy to come out of a game like that and look at a million things and look at everything that went wrong,” Lonergan said, “but we made a good point of just sticking to the big rocks that we know make the big differences in those games. We probably just missed the mark on a majority of those really. England really beat us in those areas and that makes a huge difference.”

He also pointed to execution speed as a key factor. “There’s technical things but there’s also the speed in which we go about doing those things. I think England beat us to most of those.”

Across the 80 minutes, Australia conceded more penalties, held less possession and territory, and missed more tackles than their hosts — a statistical picture that Kiss acknowledged leaves clear work to be done as the squad attempts to arrest the slide in Edinburgh.