All Blacks are taken to the brink by England bravery
GLORIOUS failure was England’s fate yesterday, but their dejected, defiant response told its own story of rising standards and ambitions.
After pushing the world champions to the brink of an upset, Stuart Lancaster and his squad made it plain that being gallant losers will not suffice.
There was a collective satisfaction about the way they had overcome considerable prematch adversity to take the All Blacks to the edge of the abyss, but restrained pride was trumped by an acute sense of angst.
This was not the mis-match widely predicted. It was a tight, tense, gruelling encounter and England were not behind on the scoreboard until 10 minutes from the end. They were weakened, written off and cast as mere cannon fodder, but they would not accept that a New Zealand victory was pre-ordained.
Instead, Lancaster’s scratch line-up — decimated by injuries and a personnel shortage caused by fixture congestion — took the fight to the hosts and out-played them in most areas.
Amid a multitude of exceptional individual performances, No 8 Ben Morgan was a titanic figure, while Manu Tuilagi was the fulcrum of the back-line threat.
The Leicester centre repeatedly blasted gaping holes in the home defence and the fact that he was given the ammunition to do so was testament to the men who had been identified as potentially weak links for the tourists.
Circumstances had brought Freddie Burns and Kyle Eastmond together as an untried 10-12 axis and the fear was that they would be targeted and exposed by the All Blacks.
That doomsday scenario did not come to pass, as the English pair held firm and caused far more trouble than they were forced to endure. Burns kicked all his penalties, pulled the strings with authority and committed body and soul to tackling duties.
Eastmond, meanwhile, was a revelation — displaying a knack for sending Tuilagi into space with beautifully delayed passes.
At the forefront of the whole, effort was Chris Robshaw, who led by example and eclipsed his legendary rival, Richie McCaw. But the captain was not prepared to accept praise for himself and his team as any sort of compensation for a negative outcome.
‘We’re extremely proud of all the effort that’s gone in, to come here and do that, but we can’t be happy with that,’ said the Harlequins flanker. ‘The standards we set for each other now and the standards we play at; we’re coming down here to win a Test series, simple as that.’
Asked what they have to do better in Dunedin next week, the skipper added: ‘We’ve just got to win, simple as that. We got ourselves in some good positions at times, but didn’t quite finish them off. They probably got on our line twice and took a chance. That’s the difference.’
When it was put to him that the All Blacks will be markedly better in six days’ time, Robshaw said: ‘Yeah, but so will we. We know we’re going to get stronger every week, but we were pretty evenly-matched out there.’
That, in fact, is understating the English performance. In so many ways, they held the aces until the finale to this series opener, when Conrad Smith touched down in the right corner two minutes from time for New Zealand, to ensure they preserved their 20-year unbeaten record at this venue.
Until the try at the end, the scoring had come down to a kicking duel, with Aaron Cruden’s five penalties matched by Burns’ four and one from his replacement, Danny Cipriani.
Lancaster was asked if this was a missed chance to claim a historic victory and he said: ‘Yes, definitely. Now the game next week is huge for us because we want to tie the series and go to a decider in Hamilton believing we can win it.’
England will step up preparations for the Dunedin Test in the belief that they have nothing to fear from the world’s best team.