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Marcus Smith partly blames himself for England loss to NZ
By PA
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 Borthwickâs menâ 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.
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Smith, who kicked two conversions and a penalty, said fine margins were the difference between the teams.
âFor me it was just the small moments. Eden Park is a historic place and we had the belief we could do something special,â Smith told Sky Sports.
âIt was probably the small moments â a touch at the breakdown, a few wrong decisions on the edges from myself â that turned the tie in the All Blacksâ favour.
âWhen theyâre ahead, theyâre obviously a very successful team and itâs hard to wrestle momentum back. Tough one to take.
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âWeâre building to something and the belief we have is growing. On another day we get the result here, or the result last week.
âFair play to New Zealand, theyâre a tough team to beat. Weâll give them a good go in the autumn.â
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 â both close to the whitewash â as key moments.
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âItâs tough. Weâve shown some improvement in the way weâre playing the game but this wasnât good enough at the end of the day,â second row Maro Itoje said.
âIn 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 youâre playing against a good team you canât really do that.
âWe 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. Weâre only going to get better for these experiences.â
New Zealand captain Scott Barrett admitted the All Blacks were forced to show character in both matches.
âIâm hugely proud of the boys to hold on and win the arm wrestle and finish off a good performance,â Barrett said.
âTest matches certainly test your character and we had to dig deep there right until the last minute. Well done to England, theyâve had two strong Test matches against us.â
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
Donât 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 minâŚ.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 Iâve ever seen, which makes Englandâs inability to put any points on them in the same period even more frustrating. Iâm 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 whatâs key is relatively, this is a very inexperienced England team compared to the ABs team that beat them. Thereâs 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 Iâd start by looking at Borthwickâs 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 canât for the life of me understand why T. Curry was on the bench twice given heâs 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.