Martin Johnson has admitted his England team are suffering a crisis of confidence before their final autumn Test against New Zealand this weekend. Johnson said he felt as if he had 'aged 20 years' during the home side's error-strewn performance game against Argentina at Twickenham and warned that a significant improvement would be required against the All Blacks this Saturday. 'As a team we were clearly nervous,' said Johnson, bemoaning the litany of knock-ons and mistakes as England scraped to a 16-9 victory.
'You can't deny it was a tough game to watch, particularly the first half, and frustrating for all of us. If we make those mistakes again next week we're going to be in big trouble. We'll need to be sharper against the All Blacks because they will turn those half-chances into seven points."
Aside from the buccaneering effort of Lewis Moody and some defiant defence in the final quarter, even the consolation of victory could not mask several major issues which Johnson still needs to tackle.
The robotic, strictly limited nature of England's attacking game remains a serious problem, with the Twickenham crowd increasingly irritated by the amount of possession being kicked away. "Fear is always there but the guys just need to go out and trust themselves more," said Johnson. "You try and give them the confidence to go and play and make good decisions. That beliefin themselves is a major thing. You can hammer people but our job is to get them in the best shape to play on Saturday.'After 13 Tests in charge, however, this was only Johnson's sixth win and there is no obvious sign of consistent improvement.
The Rugby Football Union remains adamant, though, that the former World Cup-winning captain will remain in the job until at least the 2011 World Cup.
"I said to the guys afterwards: 'There's a hundred things we can say but ultimately we won it,'" continued Johnson. "If it was a big World Cup pool game, that's all you need to do. The best team in the world are South Africa and they play pretty basic rugby. It's about execution.
There were times when we could have countered but we talked the weather up this week and guys were predictably cautious.
You're always going to get a lot of mistakes in those sort of conditions but it just killed our momentum, particularly in the first half. Guys become even more tense."
