• England 35-18 Australia

England scrum-half learned from All Blacks defeat

England's players celebrate after Chris Ashton's try © Getty Images

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Man of the match Ben Youngs believes the anguish of last week's defeat to New Zealand played a huge part in England's superb win over Australia.

A week after going down 26-16 to the All Blacks despite a rousing second-half comeback, Martin Johnson's men produced a fantastic all-round display to win 35-18 against the Wallabies at Twickenham. Chris Ashton scored the hosts' two tries but it was scrum-half Youngs who took the plaudits as he pulled the strings in partnership with club colleague Toby Flood in the half-backs.

"Last week we got bits of it really well," he told Sky Sports 1. "We were bitterly disappointed but we learned a huge amount - and, had we won that, maybe we wouldn't have learned so much."

He was modest about his personal display, and said: "We're all here to play as we do for our clubs, that's why you get selected to play for your country and you've got to back that up. I know [Flood] inside-out, and vice-versa, so it makes it easier, but we've got world-class players all over the park."

Johnson was determined to enjoy the result but kept his feet resolutely planted on the ground. "You can get carried away with these things," he told Sky Sports. "We played pretty well, there was a good tempo from the start. We got turnovers and went to the edges, which we tried to do last week - we did it better this week.

"Last week we did lots of good things but we didn't start well enough. Today we didn't make those mistakes. It was a little better all over. There were a lot of outstanding performances. You put the work in and to get the reward is great, sometimes it comes off like today and you get a memorable performance - I'm happy for everybody.

"We do that work and we want to win, when you don't it's a horrible feeling. We've got two more games now which is great, it's about being better next time we play - but let the players enjoy this one and on Monday we'll go forwards."

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