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Australia have quickly turned their attentions to their forthcoming tour of Britain and Ireland after coming up short against New Zealand for the fourth time this year.

The Wallabies went down 32-19 in Tokyo in the final Bledisloe Cup match of the year to extend their run of consecutive defeats to the All Blacks to seven but, with a midweek game against Gloucester looming followed by a Test against England on Saturday, Robbie Deans has been quick to shift focus.

"We've got an exciting opportunity ahead of us now," said Deans, who has lost all bar one Test against his countrymen since taking charge of Australia last year. "This was our last southern hemisphere outing (of the year) and we have a great tour ahead of us, which we're really looking forward to."

He added: "We'll be better for this performance. We're back playing rugby, which we hadn't done for two months, so that's a good launching pad now for us to push on to the UK."

"This was the end of our domestic season and for a lot of reasons we had a score to settle there. But it didn't happen, obviously, and we look at England now and get into our tour," said new Australia skipper Rocky Elsom (pictured arriving in England).

"We're very frustrated because that opened up for us more than any other game this year but we just weren't able to take advantage of it.

"I couldn't fault the guys for effort. I was really proud of the effort they put in and the intensity they brought to the match. But it wasn't good enough for us, which is a big problem.

"Fortunately for us, we've got England to think about and they'll be looking at us as the southern hemisphere team that they'll be most likely to beat."

PA Sport