Australia took a 2-0 lead in the five-Test series with a 218-run trouncing of England in the Adelaide Test on Monday and will retrieve the urn they lost to their arch rivals in 2009 if they win in Perth.
The Sydney Morning Herald splashed a picture of a gravestone on its back page, looking ahead to the game that begins Friday and suggesting that England are dead and buried.
"In Affectionate Remembrance of English Cricket, which died at the WACA on 17th December, 2013. RIP," the inscription read, referring to the Perth ground and the date the third Test is due to end.
"Notwithstanding the very fact that Australia might have regained the urn by this time next week, what astonishes most about this Ashes series is how meekly England seem prepared to hand it back," he wrote.
The Sydney Daily Telegraph rubbed salt into English wounds, running a picture of a laughing Michael Clarke jokingly asking Shane Watson:"Hey Watto, did you hear the one about the Englishmen who have to face Mitch Johnson at the WACA?"
"It's about to get a whole lot worse for the struggling Poms," the tabloid said.
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