Cheika wants Wallabies improvement

MichaelCheika - Cropped

Australia coach Michael Cheika was unwilling to buy into suggestions his team's win over England was a warning to rivals at the Rugby World Cup.

The Wallabies advanced to the quarter-finals after a 33-13 win at Twickenham on Saturday as they left England as the first hosts to fail to go beyond the pool stages.

Cheika said he was targeting improvement, not sending a message to rivals, ahead of their October 10 meeting with Wales.

"It is just about ourselves at the moment and trying to improve on that," he told a news conference.

"We are coming up against the master coach [Wales coach Warren Gatland] next week. I'm not going to change what I do because we won a game."

Cheika was pleased with the way his team managed to deal with the "tsunami" of noise from the home support in London.

He said making a good start was crucial and his Wallabies delivered, rolling out to a 17-3 half-time lead.

"There are a lot of areas we can improve on. The commitment was very good and we will improve on that going forward," Cheika said.

"We really wanted it; to win and to play well. We knew there would be a lot of pain in England's backyard. It was outrageously loud and we wanted to get stuck in from the start."

Cheika added: "One of the England players told us they were going to put us under pressure for 20 minutes so we expected that."

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