LIKE most Englishmen I’m still trying to get over the disappointment of last weekend’s narrow defeat to Wales.

England made exactly the same mistakes that they did against Fiji in their opening game of the World Cup.

And the only real difference was that Wales were able to punish them more.

The problem facing England is now is that Saturday’s opponents, Australia, will be able to capitilise even more than Wales did so it has to be a concern.

England have to stop giving away so many needless penalties and it comes down to petulance as far as I’m concerned.

There is no need for them to be doing it either because the defence has looked really strong.

Apart from one moment of magic, Wales rarely looked like scoring a try, so there’s no need for England to be panicking which is what it does seem like they’re doing.

The error count is too high and turning down the penalty kick like they did right at the end of the game was a compelling error.

Owen Farrell had been kicking them over left, right and centre so he was in great kicking form so what happened really didn’t seem to make much sense to me.

Had England have kicked the penalty then the game would’ve ended in a draw and that would’ve suited us far more than Wales.

Having got a bonus point in the win against Fiji a draw would have put far more pressure on Wales than us.

But instead of kicking for the posts, England went for touch in a bid to win the game.

Plenty has been said about that, but very little has been made of the line-out call which I’m still struggling to get my head round.

England went for the first man in the line-out and they couldn’t really have made it much easier to defend against if they had tried.

WIN OR BUST FOR ENGLAND

IT’S win or bust for England this weekend when they take on Australia so it’s guaranteed to be another great occasion at Twickenham.

The pressure is really going to be on Stuart Lancaster and his side but because of injuries I’m not really sure what he can change.

It will be interesting to see who gets the nod at number eight now that Billy Vunipola has been ruled out injured and Nick Easter has been called up.

But it’s going to be very difficult for whoever does get selected because I think Australia have looked good so far.

It will be important to remain calm under pressure and England cannot keep on making the same mistakes.

THE GAP IS NARROWING

A FEW other things have caught my eye in the World Cup this week but I think the main thing is that most of the games are now far more competitive than they were four years ago.

I think that’s good for the game and it’s showing that the gap between the top teams and the so called lesser nations is far narrower than it was.

And that’s great news for the game.