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Marcus Smith partly blames himself for England loss to NZ
Marcus Smith admitted England had allowed another glorious opportunity to topple New Zealand slip away in a 24-17 defeat at Eden Park.
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Tries by Immanuel Feyi-Waboso and Tommy Freeman, set-up by kicks from Smith, helped Steve Borthwick’s men’ build a 17-13 lead heading into the final quarter, but the arrival of Beauden Barrett off the bench ignited the All Blacks.
New Zealand finished the match strongly to complete a 2-0 series victory having won the first Test 16-15 with the rivals meeting again at Twickenham on November 2.
Smith, who kicked two conversions and a penalty, said fine margins were the difference between the teams.
“For me it was just the small moments. Eden Park is a historic place and we had the belief we could do something special,” Smith told Sky Sports.
“It was probably the small moments – a touch at the breakdown, a few wrong decisions on the edges from myself – that turned the tie in the All Blacks’ favour.
“When they’re ahead, they’re obviously a very successful team and it’s hard to wrestle momentum back. Tough one to take.
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“We’re building to something and the belief we have is growing. On another day we get the result here, or the result last week.
“Fair play to New Zealand, they’re a tough team to beat. We’ll give them a good go in the autumn.”
England dominated territory and possession in the third quarter but could not engineer the points needed to put the All Blacks away at a point in the game when they were struggling for composure.
The tourists will look back on George Martin giving away a needless free-kick at a line-out and Jamie George fumbling as an attack gathered pace – both close to the whitewash – as key moments.
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“It’s tough. We’ve shown some improvement in the way we’re playing the game but this wasn’t good enough at the end of the day,” second row Maro Itoje said.
“In the second-half we were not as accurate as we wanted to be. We gave away a few too many penalties and we gave them easy points and easy territory. When you’re playing against a good team you can’t really do that.
“We gave them backfield opportunities to run it back to them and Beauden Barrett and the rest of them are good players. We live and we learn. We’re only going to get better for these experiences.”
New Zealand captain Scott Barrett admitted the All Blacks were forced to show character in both matches.
“I’m hugely proud of the boys to hold on and win the arm wrestle and finish off a good performance,” Barrett said.
“Test matches certainly test your character and we had to dig deep there right until the last minute. Well done to England, they’ve had two strong Test matches against us.”
1) insistence on the grubbers killed them, especially giving it to BB
2) why does underhill come off and chandler cumming stay on? I find he goes missing and runs too high.
3) smith was quite brilliant cool to see him develop
Don’t beat yourself up little man. Teams losing in NZ is the norm
England faded when Borthwick inexplicably brought on subs when perhaps only one was needed.
Same with grubber kicks. Management instruction .
Spencer was terrific in prem final and 2nd best 9 in the league.
Jvp has done nothing for a while and does not deserve promoting over Spencer until he does.
Lawrence needs a kick up the backside to get more involved and practice catching the ball .
Otherwise ,England just one or two players short of a cracking side .
Providing Borthwick learns to only bring subs on if required and not at predetermined times which wrecks momentum .
Very exciting times in view .
ENG faded in the last 20 min….They need more depth and a 2nd Itoje
I mean this with all respect, but that second half performance until Beauden came on was probably one of the most uninspiring AB performances I think I’ve ever seen, which makes England’s inability to put any points on them in the same period even more frustrating. I’m reading a lot of criticism of Itoje for the costly penalties he gave away, but the bottom line is those penalties occurred in or around the England 22 and it was because England kept gifting the ball back which allowed the ABs to get in Englands half of the pitch.
Going to take a few days to extract any positives from this tour, but I think what’s key is relatively, this is a very inexperienced England team compared to the ABs team that beat them. There’s clearly some great players in this AB team, but I think Robertson is a going to have his work cut out figuring out who goes where.
For England, I think I’d start by looking at Borthwick’s bench selection and ask some honest questions as to whether there were any other players left at home who might have contributed more had they been given the opportunity. I can’t for the life of me understand why T. Curry was on the bench twice given he’s returning from injury. Why not give his brother Ben a run out given their nearly identical attributes?
A few mistakes but lunacy to keep kicking grubbers to Beauden Barrett for a net gain of about -200m. I cant recall if it was Marcus or Fin Smith doing it, it may have been Fin. It looked like a planned tactic at that point, but someone must abandon it when its backfiring.
Martin made a major mistake which seemed to affect him for the remaining minutes.