Loving the insights here, but there are a few themes I'm not sure hold up to analytical scrutiny.
I don't think you can really say that England did well on defence because of "how low the possession stats were", or similarly "the number of tackles they made". For tackles, if the whole team made a lot of tackles doesn't mean they defended well, they could also have missed a lot of tackles. They didn't , but number of successful tackles isn't a very relevant stat. On possession, Australia had a lot of possession inside their own 22, so it wasn't as if they were in scoring positions when they had the ball. What's more it is easier to defend a team in their 22 because their options are more limited given the risk of taking a deep option then getting tackled in their own goal, or the risk of the posts getting in the way....
...which brings me to something else...
Yes the Australian tactics were dumb, but I can see what they were trying, but failing, to do. They wanted to make some in roads and then go wide for a midfielder to make a kick once the winger was in indecision about fielding a kick or defending in the line, allowing them to kick longer without the risk of a quick throw in and counter attack. It didn't work, as England's defence was too good and that one time may shut down both the wide space and the kick space.
England's defensive tactics were pretty good and pretty dynamic.
At the start of the game I couldn't work out why england were allowing Australia such quick ruck ball. And actually they did get it a bit wrong But I saw as the game progressed they became very good at choosing when to let Australia have quick ball, at which point they'd catch them behind the gain line in the next phase, or contest the ruck when their defence wasn't in a great position.
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