World Cup countdown begins for Eddie and England

It will be confirmed next week that England will not face world champions New Zealand until 2018, with the autumn Test series next year set to feature three Test matches in November at Twickenham against Australia, Argentina and a Pacific Island side, most likely Samoa.

His job is safe for now but four defeats against England and three to the All Blacks show how far behind Australia are to world rugby’s cream of the crop.

Taskmaster boss Jones maintains that England can only be considered the best team on the planet by claiming World Cup glory in Japan in 2019. It’s just whether we get the desire and cohesion right. “They played some very good rugby and we just had to hang in there and get to half time”.

“We are progressing but we have a long way to go to get to number one”. We are desperate to achieve things.

“The first was good, but we needed to score more points and we had a lot of opportunities down there”. They could win in lots of different ways and had some world-class players.

The English smashed Australia to secure the result within 10 minutes of the restart, scoring two intelligent, converted tries to zoom from a nervy 16-13 down to a comfortable 27-16 ahead.

They had a very, very consistent scrum and lineout.

Marland Yarde and man of the match Ben Youngs touched down in the opening 10 minutes of the second half for the hosts’ other tries.

We were in a better space and in the second half we did the basics really well.

“If Cheika chooses to say that, then it’s his choice”, Jones said of his fellow Australian.

The build-up was characterised by Jones and Australia head coach Michael Cheika, former club team-mates in Australia, trading barbs in the media.

England have always held a set piece dominance over Australia, besides the game in the World Cup 2015 when Australia blew England away up front.

Cheika has often labelled a year in which Australia fielded 13 debutants as “transitional” and he was in confident mood despite Saturday’s loss.

“It’s their last chance for redemption, isn’t it”, Jones said. But we actually think there’s still plenty of room for improvement.

“I don’t think the red card will have any impact on him, it is one of those unfortunate incidents – there was no malice in it at all”, added Robinson. “Twickenham is a great place to play rugby with a passionate crowd and when you see the little pockets of gold shirts, you gravitate towards them because you need all the help you can get when you’re in the lion’s den”.

Australia finished their season on Saturday in the same way as a year ago: head-in-hands after defeat at Twickenham.

But this tour also featured a Test against France and Cheika agreed that five internationals in as many weeks was too heavy a schedule.

“We met with the referees in June with some of the England staff present and we’ll make a decision later in the week as to whether we do that again or not”, Larkham said.

Kepu scored in a rare Wallaby break but, after a harsh yellow card for winger Dane Haylett-Petty for a late tackle, Joseph got his second when he picked off a floated David Pocock try to hammer home the advantage and round off a memorable year.