Barnes wrote ahead of the match:
"England have forgotten the mesmerising rugby of which they were capable before World Cup pressure sent them off the scales" - If that was mesmerising rugby (though they did score some tries), my backside is a pineapple.
"They had not lost the skills which made them such an exciting team in the Six Nations" - What skills? And it was just the Six Nations.
"England wanted it, Wales wanted it even more" - This assumes desire trumps sound selection, game plan, skill, invention and professionalism.
"The true test of the Australian scrum has arrived; England's scrum is back near its best" - Uh, no.
"The Wallabies have no world-class kicking options" - Bernard Foley, 28 points, 100 per cent success rate.
"Israel Folau is a weak kick returner" - Did he mistake Kurtley Beale for Folau?
The point is not to subject Mr Barnes to a textual shoulder-charge but to illustrate the peculiar English ability not to understand or play the game they invented very well.
Some call it arrogance but it is really the inability to recognise and repair what is wrong.
For me, the problem with English rugby is what I call the Nicky Allen Syndrome and in-built attitudes.
Allen would probably have been one of the great All Blacks first five-eighths but for his tragic early death. As a small boy, he used to hang around our school first XV, forever kicking a ball to himself, running and sidestepping imaginary opponents, giving his own commentary, living life with a rugby ball in his hands.
In New Zealand, there are lots of Nicky Allens, constantly familiarising themselves with the bounce of the ball, the rhythms and feel of the sport.
The Nicky Allen Syndrome is how kids learn to enjoy the game and pick up the skills; attitude is how they apply it. Kiwi kids are imbued with an appreciation that scoring a try is the whole point.
In England, many don't much touch a rugby ball or learn anything substantive about the game until well into their school years.
By then, New Zealand kids are long past instinct and well into the rhythms that give them such good handling and running skills.
Some blame Premiership clubs and lack of central contracts for weakening the national side, plus the demise of lesser clubs as Premiership outfits have taken a stranglehold - diluting the ability to find a gem of a player hidden in the provinces. Some blame foreign players. Former England and Lions lock (and now World Rugby board member) Bill Beaumont says England's vast playing numbers mean they have "too much choice".
Don't buy that one, Bill. In England, coaches teach kids the percentage game - robotic, grinding, possession-based rugby, based on set-piece superiority, kicking for territory and kicking for goal. Like all percentages, it is based on mathematical probabilities and is about as exciting as a phone book.
Top coaches are conservative - there is no other explanation for Brad Barritt, a transplanted South African, being in England's midfield, because his main attribute is defence.
Watching England against Wales and then Australia, I was reminded of the 1988 Welsh tour of New Zealand, a touring side so bad the All Blacks walloped them by record margins and they became known as the "Woeful Welsh", in spite of the fact they had shared the Five Nations crown that year.
Afterwards, we touring rugby scribes sombrely asked manager Clive Rowlands a question that begged an answer alluding to the death of the game there: "What now for Welsh rugby?"
"Well," Rowlands chirped in his Welsh lilt, "I guess we'll just have to go back to beating England."
Which they did ... Wales at least have some flair.
While coaches at the top continue to press down conservatively, and kids at the bottom continue to learn the game but not its inner beauty, the two ends of English rugby seem destined never properly to connect.
