Topsy-turvy debut for Ojo

London Irish wing Topsy Ojo was wrestling with mixed emotions after marking his Test debut with two tries in England's 37-20 defeat by New Zealand on Saturday.

London Irish wing Topsy Ojo was wrestling with mixed emotions after marking his Test debut with two tries in England's 37-20 defeat by New Zealand on Saturday.

Ojo sprinted 80 metres to score the first after intercepting a pass from Dan Carter and he latched onto a cross-kick from fellow debutant Danny Care for the second.

In truth, Ojo's opportunistic scores did little more than give the scoreboard a measure of respectability for England, whose mistakes were ruthlessly punished.

But it was a proud day for the Ojo family. His father Akin and brother Babs both flew to Auckland this week after learning Topsy was in the team.

“I've had a little bit of time to think about it since the game finished and obviously I'm very happy, very proud and couldn't have wished for a better start to my career,” said Ojo, who became the first England back to score a try in New Zealand for a decade.

“Hopefully I've got a lot more days to come. It was a very tough game. It was very physical, very quick but I did enjoy myself out there.

“It was great to be involved and I'm just looking for more now really. It's one of those, once you've had a taste of it, it just makes you want a lot more of it, and I'm hoping for a lot more of that.

“My dad and brother are very proud of me and are glad they made the journey out. They are happy with the performance, disappointed with the result.”

England's forwards gained the upper hand in the first 20 minutes but they could not translate that into any concerted, dangerous back play.

England made no line-breaks all match and it was only in the last 20 minutes, when Care had come on and Olly Barkley had moved to fly-half, the attacking game had any real spark to it.

But, by then, it was too late. Carter had done the damage and finished with a personal haul of 22 points.

The game had long been over as a contest when Ojo latched onto Care's chip forward and beat three defenders to score in the corner.

Ojo said: “For large stretches of the game we matched them and in areas we were better than them. It's disappointing and a lesson that we'll learn.

“If you're not fully concentrating for patches of the game, you make mistakes and it's going to cost you at international level.

“It's my first international cap but I've seen that for a while now. At any level, if you make mistakes you're going to pay the price and unfortunately we did that tonight.

“For next week we just need to cut the mistakes out – two or three errors cost us two or three tries and that was the difference at the end of the game.”