Eagerly awaited Tests do not always live up to their billing. This was different: a belter from start to (another) contentious finish, a sporting event to nourish the soul. Both sides deserved credit for rising above the sodden conditions and contributing to an occasion as rich, in every sense, as any the old cabbage patch has staged outside the 2015 Rugby World Cup.
It made for a memorable Remembrance weekend and, for England, has signposted the road to a tantalising future. Should these teams collide in a monumental knockout game in Japan next year, the red-rose tinted view is the All Blacks will be the warier squad. “I am convinced we’ve got more growth in us, between now and the World Cup, than them,” the England wing Jonny May said. “They will improve, of course they will, but we’ve got more growth in us. Our individuals can get better and the team can get better.”
New Zealand, as ever, need only gesture at the scoreboard but the first half-hour was everything Eddie Jones and his players could have wanted. Direct, strong and resourceful, with a powerful driving maul also in evidence, it was almost the white orcs of 2002-03 reincarnated. They could not quite sustain it but what about next time? On this evidence even the most ardent Kiwi disciples will not be totally confident.
Owen Farrell’s kicks and hits help England overcome South Africa
A win would have rounded off the day nicely for England’s players but easing the natural disappointment at letting an early 15-0 lead slip is the sense their World Cup plans are coming together. In no particular order Jones now knows he possesses another top-drawer openside alternative in Sam Underhill, increasing depth in the front five, a better midfield balance and danger on the flanks. Add two fired-up Vunipolas, Joe Launchbury, Nathan Hughes, Anthony Watson and a healthy Manu Tuilagi and, if everyone stays fit, he has an increasingly hefty arsenal with which to play.
That does not make England short-odds World Cup favourites but the past fortnight has propelled them back into the mix. Mark Wilson and Ben Moon have given the lie to Jones’s theory the Premiership does not breed players capable of thriving in the heat of a Test match, Kyle Sinckler is improving steadily and Ben Youngs’s mojo is returning. Neither Chris Ashton nor Henry Slade would look out of place in an All Black backline and last season’s weary body language is nowhere to be seen.
Even the carping about Saturday’s second-half decision-making should be kept in perspective. England’s costly series of lineout breakdowns undermined them much more than Owen Farrell’s justified decision twice to kick to the corner with New Zealand rocking and the home pack revved up; hindsight is always wonderful but to blame Farrell for following his instincts is conveniently to overlook the momentum England had at the time.
All of it would have been irrelevant had Underhill’s spectacular “try that never was” not been disallowed following the intervention of the South African television match official, Marius Jonker. If Courtney Lawes’s toenail was technically offside it was no different to the dozens of earlier instances when players from both teams could have been penalised for the same crime. The referee Jérôme Garcès, standing little more than a yard away, saw nothing wrong initially; in terms of the “clear and obvious” criteria World Rugby says must now apply to TMO referrals it was nothing of the sort.
Eddie Jones is left five minutes short against All Blacks but time is on his side | Andy Bull
Consistency remains more elusive than ever. England benefited from a marginal call in the closing moments against South Africa; this one went the other way. It is rugby’s biggest modern handicap: crucial decisions that remain almost impossible to agree on even after dozens of slow-motion replays. England were lucky to win last week and unlucky on Saturday: the moral of the story is that Test rugby’s margins have never been so ridiculously wafer-thin.
Better, perhaps, to study other performance indicators. Does Farrell offer more to his team at fly-half? Definitely. If he stays fit, is Underhill the missing link in England’s back-row? If nothing else, the Bath flanker has earned Beauden Barrett’s respect. What price Wilson fading quietly back into the shrubbery once Chris Robshaw is fit? Based on the past two Tests, that would be a huge injustice.
Jones, though, remains adamant World Cup winning sides must have 800-odd caps. The Vunipolas will jointly supply 88 but if Robshaw, Mike Brown and Dan Cole do not make it to Japan, Jones’s sums will not quite add up. “Eddie’s got his formula,” May said. “Average age 28. Average caps: 50-ish. Any team can win on any day but, to win seven games in a row, you are more than likely to need experience and to have been together for as long as possible.”
England are in decent shape, either way, before their final two autumn Tests against Japan and Australia. “I think you can see measurably we’re taking steps forward and we’ve got half a side out there,” Jones said.
He is also aware life will become even more interesting if Ireland turn over New Zealand in Dublin this weekend. “If you’re prepared to play a certain way against the All Blacks and you can do it very well, you can make them uncomfortable. That hasn’t changed since Adam was a boy.”
The scoreboard may say otherwise but Saturday was England’s most heartening 80 minutes of the Jones era.