Bad times are good for facing All Blacks

OVER the decades, playing New Zealand has provided the ultimate Test with teams needing to be in top shape mentally and physically to stand any chance.

Or so you would think. Surprisingly, of the five home wins England have claimed against the All Blacks, four have come off the back of dispiriting losses.

Bernard Gadney’s 1936 team won in glorious style but in their previous game had slipped to a 10-7 defeat against Scotland at Murrayfield while in 1983, when England won 15-9, the had lost 25-15 to Ireland in the final Five Nations game the season before.

The memory of a calamitous 17-3 defeat in Dublin was still fresh in the mind of England players when they recorded another 15-9 win over New Zealand in their very next game while six years ago it was even worse.

In his first November series the England of Stuart Lancaster, above, stumbled to unimpressive defeats against Australia and South Africa before they lined up against the All Blacks. The result was a thumping 38-21 win.

Only once have England recorded a home victory over New Zealand off the back of a win and that was in 2002 when Clive Woodward’s England got home 31-28 a few months after an experimental England XV had beaten the Pumas.

So the moral would appear to be that England against New Zealand at home is a stand-alone fixture with its own dynamics. England wins against the All Blacks anywhere – seven in 41 attempts – are in any case almost by definition a shock result and are just as likely to happen when England appear to be in bad shape rather than good.