The Wallabies have gone down in their last four outings – the first time since 2013 – and with two Bledisloe Cup matches on the horizon in late August, few are making any assumptions after what they dished up against a rejuvenated England outfit.

Cheika said in a post-match interview he felt like he had "let our country down". He has not underplayed the difficulty of the task at hand to rebuild from the bottom up if Australia are any chance of claiming the Bledisloe Cup for the first time since 2002.

"We are very painful right now, I won't lie to you, but we will dust ourselves off and do our absolute best when the Bledisloe starts," Cheika said. "I would rather not be here. I would rather have done better from a results point of view and not be in that situation. But we're in it now so we have to do the work to make sure we can prove that that's not a correct evaluation of us."

"We want to be good all the time, then people will respect us a little bit more in the bigger picture."

A World Cup final against New Zealand reignited belief in the potential of Australian rugby but the hopes were dashed.

Australia have gone from embarrassing England at Twickenham last year to being the ones embarrassed themselves in the space of eight months.

It is a tough pill to swallow, particularly for a man as proud as Cheika of the successes in 2015. However, he claims the whitewash is not a shock to the system.

"Everything has to be earnt and re-earnt," Cheika said. "I start from zero every game. I knew exactly what we were in for this series, never had a doubt that it was going to be tough, that it was going to be close. I think it's proven to be that way. It should be a shock, not from the point of view of 'we're going to win the series', shocked because it's hard to lose at home. That's more a question that leans to 'were we over-confident in some type of way'? I don't think so."

Second-rower Rob Simmons will be assessed for an AC injury and is expected to miss anywhere between one to four weeks, putting his Super Rugby season in the balance given the Queensland Reds are out of the finals race.

"Rob suffered a grade two AC injury to his right shoulder," an ARU spokesperson said on Sunday. "He'll return to Queensland today [Sunday] where the Reds and ARU medical team will continue to assess the full extent of the injury and manage his return to play."

Cheika is expecting to bring back his European-playing quartet of Adam Ashley-Cooper, Drew Mitchell, Will Genia and Matt Giteau for the Rugby Championship and New Zealand fixtures.

While Australia will need their best XV possible against the All Blacks, Cheika reiterated that he didn't think the Wallabies were too far off England, pointing to the fact they had almost five members of their starting side missing.

"It's not like there's a massive issue," Cheika said. "We've played a lot of footy with a relatively new team. [We were missing] half the starters that were there in the World Cup final. There's over 11 players from that World Cup squad that are different in this 30-odd. I just think that the reality is in some of the key moments we haven't been accurate enough and we haven't taken the points afforded to us by the way we've set the game up. There's a few key issues we really need to get our head around and improve before we get to New Zealand."

Dane Haylett-Petty, who scored his maiden Test try on Saturday evening and was a shining light for Australia on the wing, received high praise from Cheika although the coach was disappointed about his deflating introduction to Test footy.

"We're very disappointed in ourselves because we've given our debutants a losing dressing room three times," Cheika said. "That's not good enough; letting players come into the environment and not have the feeling of singing the anthem in the dressing room afterwards."