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As stated by leader the England captain, England were delivered a stark "wake-up call" as the Kangaroos won the prestigious series.

Australia's decisive 14-4 win at Everton's Hill Dickinson Stadium on Saturday gave them a commanding series edge, making next week's Headingley encounter a dead rubber.

Shaun Wane's side had come into the series dreaming of inflicting the Kangaroos to their first Ashes series defeat since over five decades ago.

In the past two years, they had enjoyed a dominant victory over the Tongan side and a series win over the Samoan team. But as the prestigious competition resumed after a long break, England were unable to advance further against the top-ranked team.

"We're not making excuses. We've had enough training periods to perform correctly on the field, and it's clear we've achieved that," Williams told.

"Credit to Australia. They were good in defense. But there's plenty to work on. It seems not as prepared as we thought we were going into this series.

"This serves as a valuable reality check for us, and [there is] loads to improve on."

The Kangaroos 'Show Up and Are Merciless'

Having been soundly beaten in an sloppy showing at Wembley, Wane side's were significantly better on Saturday back in the core regions of northern England.

During an energetic opening period, the home side elicited errors from the Australians and had dominant territory and ball control, but importantly did not make it count on the scoreboard.

Tellingly, the English team have now managed just one score over two full matches, with player Daryl Clark powering through late on in the setback in the capital.

On the other hand, the Kangaroos have racked up six in two games - and when mistakes began to appear in the hosts' play just after the interval, it was a case of when, not if, they were going to be severely punished.

Initially the playmaker scored, and then so too did Hudson Young. From being level at 4-4, England were down by double digits.

"Proud for the majority of the game. In my view for most of the match we were good," said Wane.

"The lapse for 10 minutes after half-time cost us severely. Munster's try was soft and should not be scored in a international fixture.

"The team is deeply disappointed. Extremely pleased the players had a dig but very frustrated with that second-half lapse, which hurt us significantly."

Although the upcoming global tournament in Oceania is just under a year from now, the team's short-term goal will be on trying to regain respect, preventing a 3-0 sweep and eradicating the mistakes that irritated the coach.

"I wanted to see greater effort thrown at the opposition. I wanted us to apply sustained attack in the game - we didn't do that last week," added the veteran coach.

"We managed this week. The issue is a minor refinements in our attack where we could have put them under more pressure. It's essential to defend both [tries] with greater resolve.

"Credit to Australia - that is no slight to them. They perform and are ruthless when they seize opportunities, and we weren't, but defensively we can and should do improve.

"They will be obsessed to win all three Tests and we need to be obsessed to make it a competitive series. I've said that to the squad. This must become our obsession. It's going to be a challenging week but whoever strives for it the most will emerge victorious next week."

Competitive Edge Needs to Increase in Super League

England have played a similar number of international fixtures to Australia since the previous global tournament in 2022.

However Wane believes that the caliber of the Australian league - and quality of the domestic rivalry matches between NSW and QLD - provide a much better foundation for competing at the top of the global stage than what is on offer in the northern hemisphere.

Wane added that the packed domestic league calendar allowed no time for him to train his squad during the season, which will only pose further questions around how England can narrow the difference to the Kangaroos before heading to Oceania in 2026.

"They play a lot of Test matches in their competition," Wane added.

"We play 10-15 a year. We need demanding games to improve the domestic league and improve our chances of succeeding in these sorts of games.

"I couldn't even practice with the squad. There was no chance to got on the field in the campaign and I had the total cooperation of all clubs in Super League.

"I understand in the shoes of the club managers that must to win games. The league is that tight. It's unfortunate but it's not the reason we were defeated today."