England 37-42 Australia: Unforgivable to concede 42 points at home – Jamie George
England conceding 42 points at home in their Autumn Nations Series defeat by Australia is “unforgivable”, says captain Jamie George.
Maro Itoje’s 78th-minute try looked to have ended a run of three successive narrow defeats for Steve Borthwick’s side.
However, replacement wing Max Jorgensen stole the game four minutes into injury time at Twickenham’s Allianz Stadium.
Both sides scored five tries in an rollercoaster game and George highlighted England’s leaky defence – they missed 35 tackles – as a major factor, but also admitted his team “took their foot of the gas” in the first half.
“Some of it defensively came down to a loss of collision and it is hard for me to say that after a loss at home,” George told BBC Sport.
“We were not physical enough and when we gave the Wallabies enough momentum it’s hard to stop them at times.”
The last time England conceded more than 40 points at Twickenham was when they suffered their record home defeat, 53-10 by France, during last year’s Six Nations.
England had led Joe Schmidt’s Australia by 12 points after two first-half tries from Chandler Cunningham-South, but surrendered that advantage by half-time.
The hosts – under new defence coach Joe El-Abd – failed to live with Australia’s dangerous attacking talent.
“Leaking 42 points at home is unacceptable and a large part of that is down to loss of collisions,” George added.
“Australia got front-foot ball and they have got pretty good players out wide who made us look vulnerable.
“We are very proud in our defence. We massively believe in the system that we have but there are going to be some clips that will be difficult to watch because we needed to be more physical and make our tackles.
“Sometimes in a Test match like that, you think the job is done. We took our foot off the gas.”
Replacement wing Ollie Sleightholme had put England 30-28 up heading into the final 10 minutes, before the visitors snatched the lead back with five minutes to go through Andrew Kellaway.
And despite reclaiming the advantage through Itoje, England were unable to close out the game from the resulting restart.
