Jones: We Were Devastated
England head coach Eddie Jones was left devastated after his side’s 16-15 loss in their November international against New Zealand at Twickenham. Saturday’s one-point defeat was hard to take for Jones, whose team had led 15-0 with 38 minutes gone, saying they would have to learn from it.
“It was a fantastic game of rugby and we’re obviously devastated,” said Jones.
“You take the good with the bad and you learn a lot from it and today we had opportunities to win the game but we didn’t take them, they did, so they deserve to win the game. Full credit to New Zealand, it was a good Test match tussle which we will learn and improve from.”
For the second week running there was late controversy in an England game as Sam Underhill was denied a try due to Courtney Lawes coming offside. Jones would not be drawn on the decision, saying: “I’ll leave it up to the match official responsible as he has the benefit of multiple cameras and angles.”
Jones also applauded his players’ commitment after a breathless game of rugby at Twickenham. “Sometimes the game loves you and sometimes the game doesn’t love you and you have to accept that if you stay in the fight long enough then the game will love you,” he said.
“We are prepared to stay in the fight so we’ll get some love from the game further down the track. I back the players’ decisions 100 percent. The players feel the game, we (coaches) don’t feel the game, we see the game. If they feel there is an opportunity to crack the opposition they have to go for it, otherwise why do we want to have leaders in the team?”
He added: “It’s a really important step forward as you benchmark yourself against New Zealand as they are the best team in the world and we’ll get a lot of reward for the work that we’ve done. “They’ve been together for three months, we’ve been together less than three weeks.
“They have 800 caps, we have 400 caps out there but we have to work harder and fix the things that didn’t work today and if we do that then we are on the way to be best team in the world which is what we always set out to be.”
RIGHT DECISION, SAYS HANSEN
All Blacks coach Steve Hansen has praised TMO Marius Jonker for making the correct decision by overruling a likely match-winning England try.
England thought they had snatched it when Sam Underhill scored after a charge down with four minutes to go, only for the TMO to rule out the score for an offside decision against Lawes. Members of the British media claimed Lawes was “clearly onside”, but Hansen commended South African Jonker for making the correct call.
“There’s no doubt he’s offside, he’s just about in the halfback’s back pocket,” Hansen said. “What was going through my mind was are they going to be brave enough to make the right decision? And they were so it was good.”
All Blacks captain Kieran Read said his players didn’t try influence the TMO by walking up to the spot for penalty decision.
“To be honest, I didn’t know, I didn’t see the call,” he said. “Like Steve [Hansen] said, once we saw what it was and the fact he was offside you just hope they make the right call and thankfully we got it.
“Once the boys saw it on the big screen then we felt it was going to be our penalty.”