Johnson lashes out at players

Perth - England coach Martin Johnson appears to be at the end of his tether after another disappointing performance by his side in an ugly 27-17 loss to Australia at Subiaco Oval on Saturday night.

The loss to the undermanned Wallabies -- missing at least nine first-choice players -- was clearly a breaking point for Johnson in his 22nd game at the helm.

Having stoutly defended his under-performing team for months, Johnson finally snapped, admitting he berated the players after the game, in which they completely dominated a raw Australian front-row and earned an unprecedented two second-half penalty tries, but still lost.

"I think this is as harsh as I have ever been with them," he said on Saturday evening.

"I said to the players that we should be pretty angry with ourselves.

"If you give it a decent shot and get beaten that is one thing, but we aided them too much and it is pretty disappointing.

"We made it too easy for the opposition."

England trailed 14-0 at half-time, with Rocky Elsom and Quade Cooper running in tries for the home side, which set up the win by dominating the opening stanza.

The tourists twice closed to within four points in the second half, but Johnson said they paid for a poor opening 30 minutes.

"We started very poorly, we couldn't get out of our half and gave them too many shots at us," he said.

"Our kick chase was not good enough and we were more than a little bit off the pace.

"It was a big effort in the second half to grind our way back into the game... but we have to get better and we can't expect to get two penalty tries every week."

Johnson is likely to make changes for next Saturday's return clash with the Wallabies at ANZ Stadium in Sydney.

Toby Flood, Shontayne Hape and Danny Care will be under pressure while 2003 World Cup hero Jonny Wilkinson could be promoted to the run-on team after coming off the bench late on Saturday.

The lively performance of Ben Youngs after he came off the bench will give Johnson further food for thought.

Johnson will be keen to see how some of his fringe players perform in Tuesday's clash against the Australian Barbarians in Gosford.