Opinion: England’s ‘nearly men’ status confirmed after ‘assassin’ George Ford misses the target against ‘vulnerable’ All Blacks
England fly-half George Ford speaking with All Blacks boss Scott Robertson, and Red Rose head coach Steve Borthwick.
When George Ford came off the bench with England eight points ahead and bossing the All Blacks the only question was why Marcus Smith was being taken off.
Smith was having one of those games you dream about. Everything he touched either went through the posts or led to a try for Manny Feyi-Waboso so glorious you could have heard the cheer at Heathrow.
Of all the ways available to Steve Borthwick’s side to let another big game slip, few if anyone would have wagered it being through Ford missing not one but two shots at the target in the last knockings of an autumn classic.
The man is an assassin in these moments. One bullet is all it takes. Normally that is. But this England team is finding ever more inventive ways to shoot itself in the foot.
They are the ‘nearly men’. How they will hate that moniker but how else to categorise a side which in the past year has so regularly put itself in position to win yet repeatedly failed to get the job done.
We all remember Smith dropping the goal which beat Ireland at the death in the Six Nations on England’s last visit to Twickenham. But this is the outlier, the exception that proves the rule.
‘Heartbreak all the way’
That apart it has been heartbreak all the way, starting in Paris at that World Cup semi-final where England had the match won only to carelessly give Handre Pollard the final say from the halfway line. South Africa escaped to victory.
France away in the Six Nations, similar story. England ahead with time up, only to concede another penalty. It still required the longest penalty goal of the entire tournament with the final kick to deny them. But Thomas Ramos was up to it.
And so to New Zealand in the summer where England led by five points in Dunedin and four in Auckland. They saw neither through.
To say it is becoming a theme with the team that Steve built is an understatement and this one will particularly sting. Home turf, a full house, a spectacular recovery from conceding the game’s first two tries.
Of course you have to credit New Zealand, Mark Tele’a in particular, for getting their noses back in front with an unbelievable finish, twisting and powering through Ford, Harry Randall and Tommy Freeman to score four minutes from time.
But that should have been as good as it got for Scott Robertson’s men. Two minutes later Ford had the ball on the tee, 36 metres out, 15 metres in from the right touchline. You’d back him all day. He struck the right upright.
The ball ricocheted down and Patrick Tuipulotu knocked it on. England were gifted another chance with a scrum in the red zone. They had enjoyed the set-piece all afternoon.
Not this time they didn’t. New Zealand got into them, the ball back was scrappy, Ford had to rush his kick, and missed to the right.
“Rugby is a game of fine margins,” Ardie Savea said later. “We got lucky but we’ll take it.”
It is and they did but as golfing great Gary Player famously said, ‘the more I practise the luckier I get’. In other words, it can’t all be down to fortune, good or otherwise.
Losing the big games
England have now failed to win any of their last six games against New Zealand, South Africa and Australia. They have failed to land a Six Nations since 2020. They have all the resources yet time and again come up short.
This was a New Zealand team vulnerable in the extreme. They lost three of their six games in the Rugby Championship, should have lost at least one more against England in July, and arrived here fancied by relatively few.
Yet they have always been masters of doing the simple things well. The nuts and bolts that go unnoticed on highlight reels and social media clips. Want to see catch and pass done better than anywhere else? Watch these guys.
So it was that for all the build-up talk of Joe Marler’s haka disrespect having ‘poked the bear’ or ‘loaded the gun’, depending on whether you listened to Jamie George or Jordie Barrett, the pertinent question was whether England could match the tourists at the basics.
In two key moments before half-time the answer was a resounding no.
Nine minutes in and the All Blacks were hanging around the England 22, posing no obvious threat. In the blink of an eye man of the match Wallace Sititi changed all that. He straightened, committing Freeman and George Furbank to engage.
As the Northampton duo homed in on him, the 22-year old saw Ellis Genge alone guarding the right touchline and sensed an obvious mismatch. Before England could adjust he slipped a pass out the back door to Tele’a and the king of footwork left the Bristol prop for dead.
England were kicking their goals and Chandler Cunningham-South levelling opponents in the tackle: Jordie Barrett, brother Beauden then Tupou Vaa’i. But these were not game-changing moments.
Not like what happened on 28 minutes. Again no warning, just brilliant identification of a chink in England’s defensive armour. Beauden Barrett hit the short side, spotted Genge infield and fed an inside ball to Will Jordan to whizz past him.
Clinical
It was clinical stuff and England were wounded. But not mortally. And when Smith intercepted Cortez Ratima’s pass on his own 22 soon after half-time, the pendulum swung.
The Harlequins star hared across halfway, realised he did not have the legs to take it to the house, so fed Furbank in support who then sent Feyi-Waboso away.
The roof came off Twickenham and when Smith landed his sixth successful kick that really should have been that. But this is England. It doesn’t happen that way.
“It’s important to recognise how much went right,” Borthwick said afterwards.
But here’s the thing. Test rugby is about winning. Small consolations just don’t cut it at this level.
