Wallabies injuries dial up pressure ahead of crunch Twickenham test

The Wallabies have a mountain to climb to right their spring tour of Europe as injuries bite harder on squad depth and England welcome back captain Owen Farrell.

Smarting from a 15-13 loss to Scotland and with injury clouds hovering over two starting players, Australia woke up in London on Monday with plenty to stew on ahead of a blockbuster clash with England this weekend.

The winning streak is over. Dave Rennie has plenty of work to do ahead of the England clash.Credit:AP

Coach Dave Rennie, denied bragging rights on his return to Scotland, where he coached before joining the Wallabies, was left to lament his players’ lack of discipline and accuracy at Murrayfield.

The tight loss, watched live by Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest and Olympics supremo John Coates, snapped Australia’s five-match winning streak and confirmed by his absence the influence of playmaker Quade Cooper, with the Wallabies attack devoid of cohesion.

It also brought with it the insult of a suspected tour-ending injury to luckless winger Jordan Petaia and head knock concerns for props Allan Alaalatoa and Taniela Tupou, and threw up questions about Australia’s scrum under the whistle of referee Romain Poite.

But with Eddie Jones laying in wait at Pennyhill Park and playmaker Owen Farrell back in camp after a COVID-19 scare, Rennie and his staff have no time to dwell on the past.

They face a six-day turnaround before playing at Twickenham on Saturday afternoon (Sunday 4.30am AEST) and in the characteristically succinct summation of Rennie, “need to be a lot better against England”.

“We didn’t play anywhere near as well as we’d like to,” he said. “We know that, we’ve got to be able to build pressure for longer, and we got pinged (penalised) a bit in possession for cleaning out and various other things. We’ve got to make some shifts there.

“We defended really well, we created multiple turnovers when Scotland had a lot of possession, hence the reason the score is close. We’ve got more in us. We certainly need to be a lot better and we need to be a lot better against England.”

England, meanwhile, will have been brought down to earth by coach Eddie Jones after their 11-try rout of Tonga.

Jones foreshadowed this after the match, playing down hype over five-eighth Smith and warning Australia would not be as easy a match up.

“They are a very well coached team by Dave Rennie, a few of their senior players like Hooper are playing exceptionally well, Nic White is playing exceptionally well and they have got a lot of talented youngsters coming through,” Jones said the day before the Wallabies played Scotland.

“They have won, I think, their last five tests. They haven’t won five tests in a row in a long time, which is a good indication of how they’re progressing and how the team’s progressing under Dave Rennie.

“The breakdown against Australia is going to be brutal. Rennie’s teams are always renowned for being exceptional at the breakdown, so we are lucky we have got the best referee in the world next Saturday in Jaco Peyper who is particularly very good in that breakdown area. We are going to get a great contest.”

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