England in shock after 'thumping'

England crashed to their worst-ever World Cup defeat yesterday as the brilliant Billy Slater and Greg Inglis led a ruthless demolition of their credibility in this tournament. The Melbourne Storm pair ran riot in their adopted city with a hat-trick apiece, as Australia simply proved far too good.

"You saw some exceptional individual attacking flair. They were nothing short of brilliant," said the admiring Australian coach, Ricky Stuart. Their captain, Darren Lockyer, praised their growing maturity as players. "They are complete footballers now," he said.

None of which will be any consolation to England, whose World Cup turned into a nightmare. The losing margin outstripped the 49-6 defeat by New Zealand in the 2000 semi-final, and was the second-worst flogging for any British or English side by Australia, falling just short of the infamous 64-10 in 2002.

The only crumb of comfort was that, under the convoluted rules of this event, these two sides could meet again in the final. Not that such a prospect looks like something to look forward to.

England started the game with a series of basic errors, conceding two tries in the first 10 minutes, the first to Slater from Cameron Smith's kick, followed by Inglis's first, which admittedly should have been disallowed for Petero Civoniceva's faulty play-the-ball. It was one of a number of decisions that went against England but their coach, Tony Smith, refused to use them as an excuse, focusing instead on his side's poor execution.

That was certainly the shortcoming when England had a long spell of pressure on the back of some solid forward work, but only managed James Roby's close-range try by way of reward. "It probably hurt us when we dominated play for so long and needed to score more than four points," said an emotional English captain, Jamie Peacock.

An exhibition of the art and science of points-scoring was on its way, for him and the other 36,000 here. Both the tries before half-time had minor question marks against them, first when Inglis was close to losing control diving over the line and then when Paul Wellens allowed Scott Prince's kick to run dead, not realising that it had been deflected by a charge-down. That position brought Anthony Laffranchi his first try and there was nothing remotely fortuitous about the way he and his team-mates went on with the job in the second half.

Sublime work by Slater released Joel Monaghan for a try, but the best of the lot came when Inglis fielded Danny McGuire's attacking kick deep in his own 20 and instantly smuggled it to Slater for a dazzling run to the opposite end. Wellens then tried a short kick-off, from which Inglis scored with ease. Slater and Laffranchi finished it off through an English defence which by now was shot to pieces and Price, deputising ably in the absence of Johnathan Thurston with a shoulder injury, took his goal tally to eight.

"We're disappointed to suffer a defeat like that, but we've all been there before," said Smith, putting a brave face on it. "We've all had a good thumping and we got one tonight from a very good team. But it's an easy one to bounce back from; it makes you more determined."

All the same, there are likely to be changes against New Zealand in Newcastle on Saturday. Too many players fell short of the mark and another, Leon Pryce, needed a half-time injection for a rib injury and is an obvious doubt. The main damage to England, however, is to their collective self-confidence – and it will take a lot of fixing.

Australia: Slater; Tate, Folau, Inglis, Monaghan; Lockyer, Prince; Price, Smith, Civoniceva, Laffranchi, Stewart, Gallen. Substitutes used: Hunt, Kite, Perry, Tupou.

England: Wellens (St Helens); Gardner (St Helens), Gleeson (Warrington), Senior (Leeds), Calderwood (Wigan); Pryce (St Helens), Burrow (Leeds); Graham (St Helens), Roby (St Helens), Morley (Warrington), Peacock (Leeds), Ellis (Leeds), Sinfield (Leeds). Substitutes used: McGuire (Leeds), Hock (Wigan), Fa'asavalu (St Helens), Wilkin (St Helens).

Referee: T Archer (Australia).