Standing on the outfield at the SCG watching the presentation ceremonies yesterday was a painful experience. You may think that we would be used to it after losing five Tests in a row, but it doesn’t get much worse than a 5-0 series humiliation.

Compare that to the feeling at the Oval 16 months ago, and I know that I have experienced the opposite extremes of what an Ashes series can do to an England cricketer.

It was disappointing to miss out on playing in Sydney with an annoying niggle around my ribs, but that didn’t make it any easier to come to terms with such a heavy defeat.

At the same time, I realised that staring us in the face was all the inspiration we should need to get our act together for the next series in 2009. One of the Australians said that, from the moment the last ball of the 2005 series had been bowled, their minds had been focused on doing everything in their power to get the Ashes back. Easily said, but their performances have shown just how hard they have worked. When the crucial moments cropped up in this series, they were always the team who found someone to perform.

That soul-destroying last day in Adelaide gave them the added confidence that they could win a game from any situation. Depressingly, it also told us that we could lose a game from any situation. It takes a lot to recover from that sort of message.

Now we have to aim to emulate the way Australia have recovered. The next Ashes series has to be our long-term goal, the mountain that we must set our sights on climbing. Before then, we have to establish a number of base camps, starting with series victories against West Indies and India this summer to rebuild our confidence. In the process, the harsh lessons of this past seven weeks have to be learnt.

The most important lesson the Australians have taught us has been the togetherness they have shown, whether it be in the field, with bat or with ball. This is something that develops over time and can come only from winning cricket matches. There are no short cuts.

That togetherness was also reinforced by an immense desire. Losing the Ashes had hurt them deeply and, as a result, their will to win in this series was a lot greater than ours.

It also helps if you have a handful of all-time great players to call on. If you were to pick a World XI at the moment, four or five Australia players would be in there, possibly more. They’ve been lucky to have the likes of Warne and McGrath, with almost 1,300 Test wickets between them, in the same team, but they have also had new players who have come in and done a job. Mike Hussey has been the bane of our lives these past few weeks, while Stuart Clark has been the perfect foil for the bigger names around him.

It is tempting to say “good riddance” to Warne and McGrath and there will be plenty of Test batsmen with a weight off their minds this morning, but cricket will be a sadder place without them.

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• Graham Spiers