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IN the dying stages of the Wallabies' loss at Twickenham, as Australia's forward pack was being wheeled around in a scrum and penalised, an England player taunted them: "It's no disco".
There was scant regard for the Wallabies' scrum before the match, even less so now.
Two years out from the World Cup at this very venue, Australia is facing an alarming problem.
They will play just one more game at Twickenham, this time next year, before competing in the pinnacle tournament of 2015.
And from the memories they've left out of Saturday's scrummaging performance, anything less than a miraculous 12-month turnaround will lead to disaster in the World Cup - where England and Wales await in their pool group.
Wallabies coach Ewen McKenzie was quick to point out that they only had problems on England's feed.
"They got the penalties, but on our scrums, we got to play from our scrums whenever we played from them," McKenzie said.
"It wasn't necessarily like we were struggling on our own ball. The scrum penalties were elsewhere.
"But there were collapses, resets, a bunch of penalties blown up."
What McKenzie does understand is that this is a matter of perception.
Australia's scrum has long been considered inferior in the northern hemisphere. Performances like last year, when they came to Twickenham and outmuscled the England pack, are considered anomalies.
England were able to draw penalties on their own feed. Source: Getty Images
The Wallabies had an ideal opportunity to prove otherwise, but have again gone backwards with Saturday's display.
While referee George Clancy made a couple of penalty decisions that could have gone either way in the scrums, it was clear to the naked eye that the Wallabies pack was pushed backward or wheeling around under pressure on three occasions.
This is certainly not the look you want to leave when, in the World Cup, against the powerful hosts, referees must make high-pressure split-second calls. In those moments, not only do they rule on what they see, they interpret on what they have previously seen.
Unless the Wallabies make dramatic improvements over the next year and leave a vastly different impression at the ground in 2014, they'll get no love in the World Cup.
England's pack came to bully Australia, yapping and hollering so much before each scrum that Clancy once called for them to "stop talking". It was alarmingly silent from the Wallabies' side.
This was the first time England had played under the new scrum laws; imagine what they'll be like in 12 months.
Australia has four northern hemisphere opponents to face in the next month to conjure solutions and begin the slow turnaround of public perception.
It's either that, or a disco inferno.
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