Curry says England must 'step up' against Wallabies

Flanker Tom Curry insists England's players must take responsibility for the inability to close out winning positions and adopt a "no excuses" mentality for Saturday's clash with Australia.

Coach Steve Borthwick has now overseen three consecutive defeats to New Zealand, with the team throwing away final-quarter leads on each occasion, leading to losses by a combined total of 10 points.

Factor in also falling agonisingly short against South Africa and France over the last 12 months and the string of near-misses against sides ranked in the top four in the world has become a recurring pattern, apart from a superb victory over Ireland in March.

Curry believes the onus is on his England team-mates to reverse the trend - starting with the Wallabies' visit to Twickenham.

"We can't be making excuses. As players we have to step up and be more consistent," Curry said.

"We won't make promises, but we've not been good enough. In the last quarter we as players definitely have to stand up. It's about the full 80 minutes.

"We obviously made mistakes and we've recognised that. There's stuff we were doing in the last quarter that we're not doing in the first 60.

"Discipline-wise, we let ourselves down. At 40 minutes it was one penalty conceded, two penalties at 60 minutes and then at 80 minutes it had built up (to seven in total).

"A, that's three points and B, it gave New Zealand territory and they are pretty clinical. That is a big factor.

"If we solved this the whole time, sport would be easy. That's the beauty of it - we have to find a way.

"There's nothing coming externally that we haven't heard. We've had all the right messages from the coaches. We as players need to step up. There are no excuses."