Wallabies scrumhalf Ryan Lonergan has rallied behind Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii, believing the team isn't giving the star back enough chances to shine.
Suaalii faced stinging criticism from the English press after the defeat at Twickenham, most notably from former England star Chris Ashton.
Ashton said on BBC post-match he looked out of place and "Doesn’t look like an international rugby union player," during a brutal assessment of the loss.
This was swatted away by Lonergan, who was quick to support Suaalii and the rest of the backline.
“I think he’s a great teammate, great athlete, and I think he played pretty well on the weekend with the opportunities that we gave him as a team, which weren’t many,” Lonergan responded to reporters.
“I thought he was good in the air and he put himself in a position around the park to be able to attack when we could but I think as a team, we just didn’t give the strike power that we have opportunity through our inaccuracies, through our launch and then just our speed of movement was down.
“When you look at the back three we’ve got, the strike power we’ve got, when they’re not getting opportunities, I don’t think it’s through a fault of their own. I think it’s probably more the symptom of what’s happening on the inside.
"I think that’s probably a little bit unfair on 'Su.'”
Lonergan concedes the Wallabies found themsleves behind the speed of the game as England constantly found space and time to attack.
"I think it's easy to come out of a game like that and look at a million things and look at everything that went wrong, but we've made a good point of sticking to the big rocks that we know make the big differences in those games and we probably just missed the mark on the majority of those really.
"England really beat us in those areas and that makes a huge difference. There's technical things, but then there's also just the speed in which we go about doing those things and, like I said, I think England beat us to most of those."
The collison battle remains at the forefront of focus before Monday's Test against Scotland, with Lonergan confident of a bounce back.
"It's probably the main point that came out of our defensive review this morning. It can come back to the speed in which you move and we just probably got caught behind the eight ball there and then they can play on top of us. It's a snowball effect," he laments.
"There's quite a lot of looking within going on at the moment and I'm sure there's going to be a great turnaround this week, throughout the week and then on the weekend. It's disappointing and everyone's super disappointed with how we showed up on the weekend and I'm sure there'll be a good bounce back from the boys."
