Tuesday 29 September 2015 06:30, UK
Sky Sports' Will Greenwood says the balance of the England team is off, but consistency in selection is key against Australia...
It's very easy to look back on England's game against Wales with all the hindsight in the world and say that Chris Robshaw should have gone for the points.
I've always been an advocate for the points when they are on offer, but what if the decision had yielded results? Had England rumbled that ball up from the lineout and scored they would all have been heroes and Robshaw particularly so.
As it was, Wales withstood it and came away with a win that has forced England into the same category as South Africa: every game becomes a must-win game. Getting the draw wasn't about how many pool points it would have given England, it was about how many pool points the draw would have denied Wales.
That will be a difficult loss for England to swallow, but importantly it's not the end of the World Cup for them. If they beat Australia, and get five points against Uruguay, they will be on 15 points, which could very well be enough to get out of the pool.
Learning from a loss and applying that experience when there's 10 minutes to go in a knockout game can be beneficial.
Either way, they can only influence the two games that are in front of them so there isn't much point allowing it to bring them down, but the obvious thing to take away from it is the experience.
People often say that it's experience that wins you World Cups, well the experience that comes with 100 caps isn't the experience of winning 100 games. Learning from a loss and applying that experience when there's 10 minutes to go in a knockout game can be beneficial.
In terms of selections, it's an interesting week for Stuart Lancaster.
I felt before the Wales game that he'd missed a trick by picking the midfield he settled on. Individually I have no issue with the players, but the balance felt off to me.
I would have opted for George Ford at fly-half and Henry Slade at outside centre. I feel the two offer vision and a subtlety that isn't there with Sam Burgess and Brad Barritt.
When it comes to the Burgess and Barritt debate, I feel that both offer a similar skill-set at inside centre, so there's no major change in the way your backline will operate on the back of either one of them. Both are direct runners with ball in hand and hard-hitting defenders without it, so either are suitable No 12s for England.
Though I disagree with who was selected, it would surprise me to see Lancaster make any unforced changes to the team for the Australia game. I would say that he will want some consistency in his starting XV for such a crucial game, to give his players a chance to solidify as a group.
Letting the players learn a bit more about each other will help them to better execute moves and work efficiently as a unit.
The back row will have a lot of pressure on them to perform. Billy Vunipola is out of the tournament and that means Ben Morgan will likely be lifted into the starting team.
You can talk all you want about that final lineout call against Wales, but in the build up to that there were three penalties that England gave away in the space of 10 minutes, which kept Wales within touching distance of their hosts.
The penalties were all converted by Dan Biggar, which kept his side in the game before that sensational try that levelled it, but what will concern Lancaster is the fact that all three penalties were conceded by a member of the loose trio.
Discipline from the back row against Australia is non-negotiable, because the Wallabies already have a pair of jackals in David Pocock and Michael Hooper who will be hunting for possession; handing it to them through an infringement would be unforgivable.
I said before the World Cup that one of England's major trump cards was the Twickenham factor. They were unbeaten there in 2015 until Wales came and took that away from them on Saturday and that has made their job a lot harder.
When teams beat you at home it gives other teams a sense they can beat you there too. So although England aren't out of the World Cup, they've just added an extra 1,000 feet to Everest.
The aura of invincibility that they held at home is now gone, and that will be harder to recover than pool points.
