Different island, different personnel but an all-too-familiar sense of deja vu. From England’s perspective another chance to beat the All Blacks has gone and another frustrating pile of ifs and maybes cannot mask the painful truth. With the third Test in Hamilton still to play, the series and the Hillary Shield are already in Kiwi hands, precisely the scenario Stuart Lancaster and his players travelled 12,000 miles to avoid.
In many ways, this will be harder to take than their Eden Park near-miss. With his side leading 10-3 and half-time fast approaching, Manu Tuilagi embarked on a 75-metre solo gallop towards the New Zealand line that could easily have resulted in a converted try and a 17-3 interval advantage from which the All Blacks would have struggled to escape.
Supporters of both sides reckoned without the extraordinary defensive work of Ben Smith, who somehow tracked down Tuilagi, nicked the ball back and launched the counterattack that resulted in a relieving New Zealand penalty, effectively the game’s crucial moment. By the time England finally recaptured some momentum with a pair of consolatory tries in the final quarter, it was too late. Once again they had lost a contest they could have closed out with a touch more composure.
They were particularly guilty of overplaying their hand either side of half-time, allowing themselves to be sucked into a whirlwind, muscular game of hide and seek with opponents who simply adore a broken field. Geoff Parling had another big game in the second-row and Chris Robshaw did everything in his power to repair the damage but, ultimately, over-enthusiastic errors and turnovers, as much as All Black magic, killed England.
Admittedly some of New Zealand’s high-speed sorcery in the third quarter deserved its rich reward, with the aforementioned Smith having an outstanding game in his home town. It remains five years since they were beaten on Kiwi soil, a remarkable sequence that now stretches to 32 wins. The only consolation for Robshaw and co is that the business end of next year’s Rugby World Cup will be staged at Twickenham. The scoreboard continues to indicate they are not that far away.
At some stage, though, they simply have to stop issuing get-out-of-jail passes to their grateful opponents. Had Billy Twelvetrees taken the simpler option of passing outside him rather than cutting back in and throwing a hopeful off-load to the floor, New Zealand would not have been permitted the 43rd-minute opportunity to attack from deep that saw Aaron Cruden and Julian Savea put Smith over for a classic counterpunch. It was a similar story seven minutes later when England won a midfield turnover only for Brodie Retallick to steal the ball back again and Jerome Kaino to slip Savea over for yet another try against his favourite opposition.
Suddenly all England’s good early work counted for little. With Owen Farrell sin-binned for not rolling away from what he argued was a collapsed maul there was worse to come, Conrad Smith ensuring Ma’a Nonu made New Zealand’s numerical advantage count in the right corner. Late scores from Mike Brown, ratified by the television match official, and Chris Ashton from Tuilagi’s clever offload narrowed the final margin to a single point but gallant failure has now ceased to mean anything to this particular England squad.
That has to be good news in the longer term; these kind of narrow defeats will only intensify their hunger to improve. Equally, they are killing themselves unnecessarily: forcing passes, still playing meandering rugby in their own half, failing to put teams away when the chance presents itself. Even before Marland Yarde had crashed through the tackle of none other than Richie McCaw for the game’s first try, inside seven minutes, propelling England into a 10-0 lead, they should have scored from a series of charges for the line which yielded nothing.
It would also have helped had Danny Care not endured one of those days when little goes right. Twice he put box-kicks out on the full and another little fumble cost England another good attacking position. Ben Morgan was rather less conspicuous than last week and the jury remains out on the issue of Tuilagi on the wing. Initially Twelvetrees and Luther Burrell combined sweetly enough but it seems it will take more than a couple of training sessions to transform Tuilagi into the marauding winger Lancaster would like him to be. The wider balance of England’s back three, in comparison to New Zealand’s, remains imperfect.
All this still does not fully explain, however, precisely how the All Blacks have managed to beat England three times in the past seven months having trailed in all three games. When it comes to upping the pace in the third quarter of tight games they have no equals and, for all the thrilling suspense of Tuilagi’s long-range sprint, that chance only came about because Cory Jane had just shelled a sitter of a pass 10 metres from England’s line.
The home team run superior support lines to England, too, with the intelligent Ben Smith a consistently inventive threat. With Israel Dagg, Kieran Read and Dan Carter to return, that danger is not about to lessen, which will annoy England further. If they cannot win in Hamilton next Saturday it will be years before their players get another chance to win in New Zealand, the 2017 Lions tour excepted.
At least this series has not been as black and white as many of its predecessors. This was another memorable contest from a neutral perspective, the pre-match choral renditions of Land of Hope and Glory and Jerusalem adding to the sense of occasion. The All Blacks even dusted down their extended, most serious-looking haka prior to kick-off, always a sign of genuine respect.
They have now won 16 Test matches in a row, one short of equalling the world record for a major international nation, and are not the world’s best team by luck. Knocking them off that lofty perch, particularly on Kiwi soil, remains the game’s ultimate challenge.
