When the Wallabies put wingers James O'Connor and Drew Mitchell up for the media in London on Monday, they might have thought they'd headed off the questions about the struggling scrum.

After all, it had been called a "laughing stock" and the Australian props "comic figures" in some savage criticism from the English press.

But then came this from a local female reporter: "So, ah, two backs. Are your forwards in scrummaging practice at the moment? Is that why you two are here?"

Australia's forwards may have avoided the media for a day but they are adamant they won't be shirking this weekend's battle with the intimidating England pack.

"I don't think there's any dramas about getting stuck into trench warfare with them," Wallabies lock Nathan Sharpe said.

"What that does, it brings them tighter, so once that opportunity does arise wide then we'll hopefully take it.

"We're not going away from that."

The Wallabies forwards are under the pump in the lead-up to Saturday's (Sunday morning AEDT) Test at Twickenham despite the hard fought 25-16 win over Wales.

Their scrum ran into big trouble at the Millennium Stadium, while the Welsh also caused problems by muscling up at the breakdown.

The pack members underwent their individual reviews with coaching staff on Monday morning before they were due to get together and thrash out their issues.

Lineout chief Sharpe said the pack needed some time to calibrate itself to the northern hemisphere style of play.

He said the Wallabies had started to adapt their scrum to Wales' style by the end of last Saturday's Test.

"You saw the All Blacks, who've got a pretty good scrum, they had a few problems as well on the weekend against England," Sharpe said.

"So it's about adapting to those and clearly we didn't do that quickly enough on the weekend.

"It wasn't until the later stages that we got our heads around it."

It's similar story at the breakdown, where Wales applied the blowtorch by aggressively committing numbers there and turning Australia over.

Sharpe said that had also taken some getting used to after the quick ball available during the fast-paced Tri-Nations contests.

"Any game of rugby you play, the great leveller is the ability to bring physicality to the game," he said.

"Playing a northern hemisphere team in close combat, it was a great eye-opener for us.

"They have different tactics up here."

But, far from running from the collisions, Sharpe said there was an anger in the Australian forwards about the performance in Cardiff which will be channelled at Twickenham.

"There's certainly a fair amount of agitation in everyone in terms of not getting the performance that we wanted to on the weekend," he said.

"To get a win at Millennium Stadium is still a great thing but that internal agitation I know is boiling over in all the boys."

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