Sun 17 Nov 2013 | 09:21
New Zealand tested by England but the World Champions remain unbeaten

46
Comments

England weren't able to repeat the heroics of a year ago but they did put up a good fight as New Zealand won yet another away match in 2013. The 30-22 victory extended the All Blacks' undefeated run on the occasion of flyhalf Dan Carter's 100th Test cap.

Julian Savea scored twice and Kieran Read once as the AB's outscored the hosts three tries to one. England lost at home for the first time in seven games, but will take heart from the effort, and what they have achived in their last three matches.

"We are deeply disappointed having put ourselves in position at 22-20 but I'm proud of the effort," England head coach Stuart Lancaster said post match.

"We had a lot of young players, some new combinations, a lot of experienced players missing, and we didn't get off to the best of starts. Being 17-3 down to the All Blacks is not where you want to be but we kept our composure, we kept building our score.

"But you know against New Zealand one error can present them an opportunity that they might take and that's what happened. We've had two wins over southern hemisphere teams and pushed another, who have won every game this year, very close.

"We are building a squad, building depth, which is what we want - but that doesn't mean we don't have a desperately disappointed dressing room," he added.

Carter limped off in the first quarter of his 100th Test match but Aaron Cruden came on to steer the ship and in the end they managed to edge ahead and hang on fairly comfortably.

"It was a hell of a Test match, you had two committed teams going at it. We're very happy to come away with the win," said All Blacks captain Richie McCaw.

Read and Ma'a Nonu both provided outstanding offloads for Savea's two tries, while Israel Dagg set Read up beautifully for his. Owen Farrell kicked 17 points for England, who will be pleased with their overall Autumn International results after having beaten Australia and Argentina previously.

New Zealand head to Dublin next weekend to take on Ireland, who lost to the Wallabies yesterday. 

46 Comments

  • whiteafrican
    11:55 AM 20/11/2013

    Yeah, he probably should have tacked on "in the professional era". Buck Shelford's All Blacks won all their tests in a calendar year in the late 80s (89 I think?) but of course they only played about 9 tests a year, so it was comparatively easier to do back then...

  • paimoe
    11:20 AM 20/11/2013

    Heh yeah I don't think NZ were too happy about going 0-3 against SA in 2009.

  • 9:01 PM 19/11/2013

    Interesting Stat.

    If NZ win this weekend against the Irish they will have not just gone undefeated this season. They will have won 54 of their last 60 test matches. Having lost 2 to Aus, 1 to SA, 1 to Eng, 1 to the Barbarians and drawn one against Aus since 19th September 2009. Thats a 90% success rate!!!

  • 5:24 PM 19/11/2013

    I guess he meant the only team to win all their games in a calendar year. Ireland drew with Australia 20-20 in 2009.

  • memberbenefits
    5:05 PM 19/11/2013

    Don't know if it's been said before but at the very end of the video the commentator says if the beat Ireland next week they'll be the first team to go a calendar year unbeaten.

    This is incorrect, Ireland did it in 2009.

    Although that'll seem like a very distant memory come Sunday evening.

  • whiteafrican
    1:56 PM 19/11/2013

    Sorry - I was mostly just joking. No offence intended.

  • drg
    12:29 PM 19/11/2013

    p.s like I said, it was included in the etcetc part. If you don't understand what et cetera means I'd be happy to explain.

  • drg
    12:27 PM 19/11/2013

    It's been done to death up there, why continue to flog a dead horse? The list was not "odd reffing decisions", odd implies strange, out of character, many of the decisions were just plain awful, this was always intended to be a demonstration of awful decisions, so I picked a couple out, if I were to write out an entire list, I'd be typing until the next full moon.

  • whiteafrican
    12:16 PM 19/11/2013

    So the list of odd reffing decisions that stuck in your mind didn't include the oddest decision in the whole game? That's, erm, odd...

  • drg
    11:57 AM 19/11/2013

    Nope that was covered by the "etcetc" part of my comment..

  • drg
    11:56 AM 19/11/2013

    See my post below which is somewhat related to what you have said, England as a team (but far from the only team) seems sadly reliant on a few key players, NZ however could have 2 injuries in one position and still fill it with a world class player.

  • whiteafrican
    11:54 AM 19/11/2013

    @DrG - you left out the part where the Ref saw a replay of Robshaw attempting to play the ball in an offside position (in breach of Law 11.1(a)) but awarded the try anyway. Easily the worst decision in the entire match, since there was no question that Joubert AND the 4th official saw what happened, but they either didn't know the Laws or chose not to apply them.

  • drg
    11:50 AM 19/11/2013

    To be totally honest and neutral, I thought the refereeing was pretty abysmal, but fairly even... Things that stuck in my mind were 12Tree's running into his own player (penalty to AB's), McCaw at one point leaping over/into a ruck/england player and dragging him down; in other words Saint McCaw going off his feet *gasps*, (Penalty to England) etc etc. It was all pretty bad, however the right team came out on top.

    One thing that strikes me time and time again is NZ's depth. I suspect the game may have been very different had England had Tuilagi etc, but they didn't and they suffered. NZ however could put a 4th pick player in any position and no one could really tell the difference... which amazes me. On the other hand England are still playing out of form Ashton, who looks like he's panicking in every situation.

    Congratulations to NZ, hard fought but deserved victory. Commiserations to England, hard fought and did well to fight back.

  • aj_capote
    11:45 AM 19/11/2013

    I would love that. Catt is one of the most skillful backs England has ever had (big claim I know) and was a supreme centre at his time. He knew which passes to deliver to unlock a defence. He was the unsung hero behind our 2003 and 07 WC campaigns - in both cases his intelligent passing got us picking holes and away from the big-tackling Pacific Islander midfields of Samoa (x2) and Tonga (07). So totally agree, he should be backs coach - get Farrell and 12Ts throwing incisive passes and plays to put the back 3 into holes. It's coming together slowly, and I'm happy with Farrell and 12Ts as 10/12, both are developing their game. Bring Tuilagi back in, plus Wade and Yarde, and this backline has the potential to really fire.

  • aj_capote
    11:40 AM 19/11/2013

    My apologies, you're of course correct! I almost don't count France as a ranking though...they can play like they're 11th in the world one week, then 1st the next!

  • whiteafrican
    11:35 AM 19/11/2013

    As above, it doesn't matter whether Robshaw actually touched the ball. Applying Law 11.1(a), the question is whether he moved forward, toward the ball from am offside position.
    - There is no serious debate that he was offside when the ball was kicked and was not placed onside by the time it arrived at his feet.
    - There is also no question that he was facing the ball and moved his hands toward it.

    Accordingly, the only correct decision is a penalty to Black.

  • whiteafrican
    11:20 AM 19/11/2013

    @ Phil mc avity - the question of whether (or when) Robshaw's hand makes contact with the ball is irrelevant. He is in an offside position when the ball is kicked (nothing wrong with that necessarily) but he then moves toward the ball before he is played onside, which Law 11.1(a) states is an offence for which the sanction is a penalty. As noted above, the correct decision would have been a penalty to Black.

  • whiteafrican
    11:17 AM 19/11/2013

    Got to agree with oldflyhalf. In any other situation, a player who is in front of the kicker and who attempts to play the ball gets a penalty awarded against him for offside, even if he fails to actually make contact with the ball.

    Law 11.1(a) clearly states that a player who "Moves forward, towards the ball" in an offside position is guilty of an offence, for which the sanction is a penalty. Robshaw is facing the ball (i.e., it is in front of him) and he moves toward it. Accordingly the correct decision would have been a penalty to Black.

  • jeri
    5:23 AM 19/11/2013

    I reckon your comments are spot on. While I'm not a fan of England's style of play it's quite exciting to see England's form as of late. Would love to see how this English team fares against the Springboks

  • oldflyhalf
    1:23 PM 18/11/2013

    In my opinion, no. 7 is in obvious offside position and he clearly intends to play the ball. Offside, enough, or ..."not enough", that`s my question ? :) Does not matter if touch, or not, the ball.
    By the way, the no. 7 prevents, involuntarily, on defender to play the ball/ to defend ?

  • dr93
    11:10 AM 18/11/2013

    Someone can correct me if im wrong, however i remember for the first 30 mins of the game NZ scrum (to me anyway) seemed much more dominant. I thought that franks was putting a lot of pressure on marler. At every scrum marlers ass was shooting out the side straight away while franks position was driving straight. So i dont think england deserved half the penalties they got there. And that forced franks to be replaced my famuina which then allowed marler to get upper hand.
    In saying all this however i think its still one of the best england performances ive seen in a long time. If they had full strength backline they will be a good shout for 6n

  • danknapp
    10:03 AM 18/11/2013

    The reply is pretty clear, he doesn't touch it. From the first angle it appears he does, but the TMO looked again and you can see that Launchbury gets to it first and takes it away from his fingertips, thankfully.

  • 9:33 AM 18/11/2013

    No i was gutted when i saw him touch the ball, but i dont think he actually did. We will never know anyway, but the forwards deserved a try, and were going to get one anyway, and they had just been refused one, im suprised no one got yellow carded for pulling down the mauls. You see mealamu pulling someone down at one point. But england got a try and the all blacks were the better team who deserved to win anyway. I dont think theres any point in talking about a ref or whatever, the main thing is the performance of the players. And how the teams get better from here on. I would like to know what other people think on how the new zealand team can up their game, ok theyre #1 but they we're great through the whole game.

  • pedro
    8:46 AM 18/11/2013

    Maybe I'm thinking too much- but he is in front of his team mate, and touches the ball. Accidental offside at least? Rather odd situation but was wondering if I was the only one a little perplexed...

  • 8:10 AM 18/11/2013

    Pedro Robshaw (7) didnt put his left hand on the ball until launchbry (try scorer) placed his on the ball. No offside.

  • 8:09 AM 18/11/2013

    If England loose next year in New Zealand we could blame it on food poisoning?

    All joking aside England were good, centres were ok, but not good enough, with need tuiliagi back to create a threat, tomkins isnt ready for internationnals yet, but fair play he done alright, farrell was good, and is getting better, he is growing into a leader also. Ashton is shite, foden goog, brown brill.
    Pack were good, and people can say that it was a bad try from them, but englands pack were going to score a try, they deserved to,and i thought vunipola grouned it the first maul but good refereeing we couldnt quite see so it became an attacking scrum, and they finally scored. Well deserved try.

    The all blacks were brill, 4 out of their 5 100 capped players played so they cant say it was a b team. First try was good, read ran at ashton seen as everyone knows he cant tackle, read took 3 players (dickson should have stayed inside and just let vunipola help ashton) and offloaded to salvea, brill. And Nonu to Salvea was...propper top class rugby. Always great to see the all blacks play that kind of rugby. England are getting better, and no way should Lancaster have "blooded" Wade agaisnt such a great team, it could have ruined his career. I would like to see wade, burrell, and maybe watson in the 6 nations though! Yarde is a worse defender than ashton! (Look at the ausralia match if you dissagree, just watch yarde all match).

    Some good points by other people here, but also some stupid rascist ones, grow up ("rosbif" what nonsense).

  • pedro
    7:09 AM 18/11/2013

    Anyone got an issue with the England try? Player (7) in an offside position touching the ball?

  • totesmcgoates
    11:01 PM 17/11/2013

    It didn't feature in the above clip so I may be wrong about this but wasn't Read penalised for going off his feet at the ruck?

  • marboy01
    9:16 PM 17/11/2013

    I can't wait until the 3 test match series in NZ 2014 kick off this will really show how good this England team are and not rely on winning at home, or having a ref side with them being the home team, I would have loved to see if they could beat the Boks this year oh well I guess you can never really know because NZ has knocked over everyone I cannot see the Irish beating the All Blacks but I guess if the team plays the best ever and have a ref who monitors the All Blacks more for indiscretions on the field and ignore the home sides infringements then you just never know the luck of the Irish!!!!!!!

  • danknapp
    7:46 PM 17/11/2013

    Agreed. England can be proud of our team's improvement over the past 18 months, but New Zealand are ranked #1 in the world for a reason. They were clinical in attack. If England want to get to #1 then we've got to offer more in the backs. I know injuries have taken a toll, but we don't have the depth at the moment.

    I think Lancaster is doing everything right at the moment in terms of encouraging younger players, and it sounds like the atmosphere in the camp is really good. I just hope the players can step up and deliver. It was a real shame that Wade wasn't fit for these internationals, but hopefully Yarde and Wade can both make appearances in the 6 Nations.

  • facepalm
    7:23 PM 17/11/2013

    Had a glance at your comment history. Has a rosbif been sleeping with your wife lately or something?

  • 45678
    7:04 PM 17/11/2013

    So the 2 disallowed England tries were bias from the ref? The intercept from Foden was absolutely fine + the only thing wrong with vunipolas effort was the camera angle

    I think England's back line is struggling because of Farrell. Standing to receive a pass is not the way to get the back line flowing. 36 was better yesterday. I'm a bit worried that he only seems to be able to step off his left foot a la Robbie fleck and will soon be found out. Tomlinson was solid if not flash. Ashton has played his last game I hope (we've heard that before)

    Tom wood and Dylan Hartley were immense

  • 6:11 PM 17/11/2013

    Actually the Muppet has a point about Read. The Referee penalised him for entering the ruck from the wrong side. When actually Messam stole the ball from the ruck and reset about two meters from where the original ruck was. Read was clearing out which he is entitled to do. Regardless of the angle as he was an arriving player to the new ruck.

    It doesn't really matter though.

    I don't think this or Twelvetrees weird shadowplay on the English line had a huge impact on the game. England deserved their scoreline. They fought hard in the middle quarters. Put some really good pressure on. I think like someone else said, the difference between the sides in this game came down to a few moments of brilliance by the AB's particularly Read's and Nonu's offloads.

  • fatprop
    5:45 PM 17/11/2013

    Pretty happy with the game. Would of loved the win but I am realistic, but with Tuilagi what would have happened ? He was responsible for 2.5 tries last year and we should have had May or Eastmond on the wing bloody hell even BANAHAN !

  • jeppy89
    5:38 PM 17/11/2013

    An eloquent one at that.

  • jeppy89
    5:36 PM 17/11/2013

    Read jumped full length on the top of a ruck....... about as off your feet as you can get. Ref had given final warning, yellow card simple. Muppet

  • oldflyhalf
    4:17 PM 17/11/2013

    Dear English, with a referees team honest and decent -wonder what could determinate on the officials to give up for 2:00 hours to the honesty and decency?-, never, but never ever, you would not be able to score 22 points in last night's. Your best compartment/player was, again, comme d`habitude, the Officials. ...good luke!

  • guy
    1:43 PM 17/11/2013

    My guess: Guest is South African and the margin with which the All Blacks won is nowhere near what anyone expected. So of course, it's the ref's fault (no disrepect meant towards all the proper SA fans on this site).

  • jimmy23
    1:43 PM 17/11/2013

    Of course a win would have been ideal but am pretty proud of our performance. For a good majority of the game a team that boasted about 300 caps pushed a team with 800+ too the limit. However a team with so many quality players and that amount of experience, it's no surprise the found a way to turn it around.

    Our pack is immense, consistently perform like that and they will be one of the best. The back line just needs sorting. While all of them are solid (bar Ashton), we need players with real line breaking ability, Mike Brown's the only one who really has that at the moment. We really could have done with Tuilagi and Yarde in this game. But as AJ said, it should sort itself out, hopefully during the 6 Nations though, because the real test comes when we tour NZ next year.

  • murina
    1:40 PM 17/11/2013

    What game were you watching Guest? With a couple of notable exceptions the AB tight 5 were second best and the England line-out was exceptional until Youngs came on and couldn't throw a cabbage into a cart (as per andyr above). I think the ABs deserved the win, but let's be clear that two bits of attacking brilliance won the game. I also think the depth of the bench was critical in the last quarter. England's replacements were poor (with the exception of Morgan) while there was no change to the ABs quality.

    Read and Savea really are rather good aren't they....?

  • matt
    1:02 PM 17/11/2013

    Similar things were being said about England at exactly this stage last year, you never know...

  • 12:52 PM 17/11/2013

    Strange match in many ways, England had 62% of possession and made only 87 tackles versus 152 by NZ in the match. This probably reflects the dominance of the English pack, but England still don't really seem to know what to do with ball in hand.

    NZ in attack were mighty, even with such little possession they made 5 clean breaks and got 3 tries, England had 0 breaks and got 1 somewhat fortunate try.

    Part of this is I imagine is to do with the backline still seeming to be a work in progress but I'm not actually sure who England can bring in aside from Tuilagi that I can say would be able to bring the required creative flair without sacrificing some of the defensive solidity.


  • andyr
    12:40 PM 17/11/2013

    New Zealand were the better team and deserved their win. But the difference was two superb off-loads and the fact Tom Youngs couldn't hit his jumpers when Hartley went. The forward platform went away at 22-20 and that was that.

  • aj_capote
    11:21 AM 17/11/2013

    The press spent all week talking down England, calling them slow, sleep-inducing, lateral and rubbish (off of 2 WINS I'll remind you) and talking up NZ, the 'greatest side the world has ever seen' and sent by God himself augmented by Skynet cybernetics to become the ultimate rugby playing machines...you get my point.

    Luckily it seems SL doesn't let the media parasites get into England's heads. I was pleased as punch with the performance yesterday - that's about the closest anyone bar SA has got to NZ all year. And that makes sense if NZ are ranked 1st, SA 2nd and England 3rd. Guscott tried to claim yesterday Wales should be ranked 3rd - no chance.

    On that point - as much as Wales fans crow on about it (and the english press), I think 30-3 was actually a good thing for this England's development. They were properly humiliated, and there's nothing like being able to say as captain 'bottle this feeling and make sure this never happens again'. For the first time in yonks we have a forward pack to fear, a scrum that no-one wants to go against, and a back row full of muscular jackals snarling and smashing. I love it - a return to proper English muscle and aggression. Great!

    Lot of complaints about our backline. To be honest I am happy with it currently. It was a makeshift one for this series - ideally we'd have had at least 1 of our first choice centres available, but the rookie centre partnership did OK. Tomkins perhaps isn't ready for internationals just yet but at least he defended really well, and 12Ts is looking like the complete package. Ideally Wade and Yarde would've been our wings but for injuries, so we wound up with an FB on the wing again, and an out-of-form Ashton on the other. Considering who's to come back from injury, the young players ready to step up, and the quick ball we are now delivering consistently, I think the backline will sort itself out in due course.

  • facepalm
    11:20 AM 17/11/2013

    1-8 we have a pack to match anyone in the world. Get rid of Farrell, get rid of Tomkins put in Burns, put in Daly then wait for Manu to recover and we have a team with serious intent. Excitement and frustration seem to come in equal amounts at the moment.

  • 10:43 AM 17/11/2013

    I've a hard time believing that Ireland will be able to hold them off given yesterdays dismal performance at the Aviva. I think we're screwed next week and possibly screwed come 6ns time!