Should have, could have, would have: A last minute defeat for England’s Rugby Union Team.
The clock is dead. George Ford is waiting in the pocket. He drop kicks to beat the All Blacks and part of the Twickenham crowd erupt.
But, as they see it’s the New Zealand players celebrating and the English with heads in hands they realise they’ve lost, and the ball drifted agonisingly wide. A strange silence envelopes the ground.
It’s important to establish a few things in the aftermath of England’s 24-22 defeat to New Zealand on Saturday. One such thing is the usually reliable George Ford had a poor cameo and missed two opportunities to finish the game.
However, whilst Ford is eviscerated in the press, two more things are true: England should never have let the game be decided by a drop goal, and Marcus Smith had badly butchered two drop goal attempts earlier in the game.
Smith though for his part was otherwise outstanding, producing the sort of performance against world class opposition that ends the debate as to whether he should be England’s fly half moving forward – if indeed there was one. Immanuel Feyi-Waboso was also outstanding, although his opposite number Mark Telea’a was more impressive still.
A very low penalty count, some excellent defensive efforts and regular entries into the New Zealand 22 leaves the spectator confused as to where it all went wrong for England.
The answer can be found largely in the contrasting impact had by the two benches and also the scarcely believable try scoring numbers pumped out by the aforementioned Tele’a and Will Jordan (0.7 and 0.9 tries per game respectively).
It will be the bench issue that will worry England most, the usually reliable Dan Cole and promising Finn Baxter penalised in two scrums, massively damaging momentum.
Whilst Nick Isiekwe was comprehensively outplayed by Patrick Tuipulotu, whose explosive carrying served as a potent reminder of New Zealand’s extraordinary depth in talent.
The solace England can take lies in that they physically matched – perhaps even dominated – a world class side for 80 minutes. Had one kick been a metre to the left, Steve Borthwick’s decision to substitute Ford for Smith would be seen as a masterstroke and a very different narrative would unfold. Yet, it didn’t. Perhaps unfairly England will need now to comfortably dispatch an out of sorts Australia and maybe even beat world champions South Africa to claim this Autumn as a success.
The experience garnered by markedly young squad though will surely be invaluable.
Words by Freddie Waterland
