England end All Blacks' unbeaten run

My personal hurt has dissipated since the game and now I am convinced that RUGBY was the winner - as well as England, who smashed us at our own game. congrats limeys. hehe - my friends who don't follow rugby are talking about the result and asking me what happened - which shows that Rugby Union has come up trumps......plus it was an awesome game of rugby football!!!! As a rugby fanatic, whats not too like about this?

Thank you for the reply however I cannot agreewith yourcomments because: 1) All fans, worth their salt, are FANatical about their team whatever the match result or their nationality. England are no different in this respect. 2) True, potentially England have a larger talent pool but in reality Soccer is absolutely massive here and has always taken the vast majority of young male sportsmen. Ask any Brit you meet. Since very recently RU has been a strictly amateur sport with the amateur ethos to the fore. Playing being more important than winning. 3) Money has only taken control since Enngland won the World up in Australia under Martin Johnson (as captain). After his retirement (as manager) when England were at their lowest the money and resources were releasted for a new Manager and Team . The reason for this was not to just recover England's rugby playing reputation but to win the next RWC which is being held in England. 4) If you think that the above scenario is fantasy I would suggest that to look what happened in the last Olympics and compare the GB medals table for the London Olympics with their previous efforts in previous Olympics. 5) The upshot is that I believe that England is working to a Master Plan with the AB game being a milestone on that road. Whether or not they suceed is another matter, but I hope they do. Certainly I must agree with Sir. Clive Woodward when he says that no SH team would want England in their opening WC group.

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Quote "if they can keep playing with that intensity and develop the ball playing flyhalf" Seems to be a problem for a lot of nations, most have given Australia a hard time over the last few years, for being very up and down. But you could argue outside the AB's who have finally struggled to keep up the intensity, Eng, SA, Wales and France have all been guilty of producing blinding performances, in-dispersed amongst some absolute rubbish. This may be a new dawn for English rugby but it could just as easily be a flash in the pan

Tuilagi had a good game, benefited from a couple of weak defensive efforts but did very well. Hard to fault any of the Englishmen really. Corbisiero will need to start scrummaging straighter, there will be ref's who don't allow him to keep angling in like that. The other player who didn't really do anything wrong but didn't impress me as much as his team mates was the fullback. Will be very interested to see how that team goes from here, if they can keep playing with that intensity and develop the ball playing flyhalf who debuted with 15 to go then I think they'll be a good team.

great comment from him, wish my team's coach would say things like that.

Well played England, breaks my heart when we lose, but we'll take it in the chin, learn from it and move on. England played great, where the hell did that come from hahaha. They had a great game plan and executed it well. Bring on 2013!

I see what you're saying, but what strikes me as interesting is how optomistic England fans are after even losing performances. England have always had an incredibly large talent pool and a terrible amount of potential, but it's so rare for your team to live up to that... I feel like the expectation of success is far greater and the media far harsher in Australia regarding the Wallabies, when the reality is that the wallabies draw from a very weak talent pool as a result of being monstered by Rugby League and AFL financially. In England you don't really have any competition for rugby talent (soccer is too different in my view and League is nothing there - your national team is almost completely non-competitive) and you have a wealthy national tournament with a pool of players 6 times larger than Australia or New Zealand. So yes, this young side has shown a great deal of potential, but they always have. will it fulfil it this time?

Well said PB. Rugby media is mainly politics, accuracy and an honest attempt at analysis is hard to come by, however we have an exception (with limits) on this site. Emotive words like excuse, blame, vicious, horrendous are the norm. Hansen needed to get it out there. Let rugby politics do their thing, don’t try and pre-empt the financial and political forces behind the corporate media, Justine Marshal included. Rest assured the English, behind closed doors, will include the flu outbreak and AB energy levels, when they do their post match analysis.

Two words: RUCK MONKEY. England were allowed to compete for the ball in unsupported body positions, and it was this advantage that they leveraged to win the breakdown and the game. Check the difference between Clancy's rulings and Barnes' in the AUS v WAL match. Add to that they bizarre "team warning" when Read leapt to compete for the restart, and the subsequent AB reaction of not bothering to compete for the restart and you have to wonder how much of the win was handed to England on a plate. NZ were naive and foolish in continuing to under-commit to a messy rucks. But they lost composure in chasing the game and having fought back to 14-15 the time had arrived for game management and slowing the pace, but they upped the ante and found their legs weren't following where their minds were going. In the short term, the solution is to congratulate England on a fine victory and take a well earned vacation having secured the #1 spot, RWC, inaugural RC undefeated and a fine run of post RWC victories (second best in history? behind another AB team?) The second thing is to reflect on the "high tempo" thing and whether there's a time to slow things down and take the sting out of an opposition who have their tails up...

Finally seen the test. That was not the AB's side we have seen all year. Missed tackles, ill timed passes, hitting breakdowns like the Wallabies, missing kicks right in front. England looked outstanding when they have proven in the previous two matches they are not. I don't believe the AB's are as good as people were making them out to be but something was very very odd in the weekend.

Congrats England, there had been signs all year the AB's (like all teams) were uncomfortable under sustained pressure at the break down. A big learning experience for some of the young guys coming in, and big reminder that test rugby is not easy. For all my fellow Kiwi's who are feeling pretty crap at present, may the following stats put a single loss in the perspective it deserves 2012 Record 14 Matches 12 Wins 1 Loss 1 Draw for a winning record of 85.7% Next Best Japan and SA @ 66.6%

Corey Jane reminds me a lot of Matt Rogers, not the biggest, fastest or best step. But just seems to have an amazing ability to put defenders off balance whilst maintaining his own. Only seen the highlight but Tuilangi seemed to have the better of Conrad

That was a really classic game. I'm late in commenting but I'm a bit dismayed by all the sniping. To me it's clear that England played with fire and fully deserved the win. I don't think we played badly at all, Jane and Savea in particular stood out, Aaron Smith was the only one who seemed to be well off his game. How about a truce, certain fans can stop saying the ABs are thugs and certain other fans can stop making excuses for an AB loss? Congratulations England.

I think that's the best post by a Kiwi after the All Blacks have lost that I've ever seen! Well done dcnz. It's easy to be humble in victory but humble in defeat shows character. While living in London in 07, many Kiwis put a bad taste in my mouth after they lost the WC quarter to France, and subsequently on rugby sites too when they lost to the Boks in 08 & 09 and had an excuse for every WC exit. There's usually an excuse or some "higher external reason why" but you are proving me wrong! There are some good folk on those 2 islands after all :-) You're right, you can't argue with a result when a team gets so outplayed like that. It's often the narrow losses that are harder to swallow. I'm a Bok supporter and we've had far too many narrow losses (and been outplayed) to you guys than I would've liked! Ha ha. Which is hard to swallow sometimes too. Well done England. They deserved to win. All Blacks will be back and strong next year. This England win remids me of 1998 when England beat the Boks in their last game of the year to stop them going unbeaten all year and breaking the record of 18 consecutive wins from 97-98. Boks lost that 1 game in 20. It was horrible! Take care all. You are the winner here dcnz

Dan, for the record England were missing Corbisiero, Hartley, Lawes, Croft and Foden from the starying XV.

I'm glad hansen said this http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/all-blacks/8026022/Summer-of-hurt-ahead-for-outplayed-ABs "Though it hurts like hell at the moment it won't do us any harm," he said. "It will stop people telling us we're the greatest team ever and all that crap. We'll get down to being an All Black side that has to work hard.

Cheers Jerry.

i wouldnt say the english totally dominated the AB's, but i would say that AB's were out passioned and out smarted. england did enough and varied their tactics enough that AB's were always playing catch up. loved the way england constantly changed the point of attack through out the entire game. just when the AB's adjusted to the last attack england would change tact again and catch the AB's off guard. i enjoyed watching the AB's play a team that was muscling up in the forwards but playing smarter. good intelligent rugby played by england. credit to the AB's in that they never stopped trying to score tries and not using the pre game illness as an excuse.

messam has done as good as he's able. messam did loads and loads of work, possibly more than read. but read is a lot more effective with ball in hand and tends to come up with those huge vital tackles when needed. messam i would keep until someone definitively shows that they are better. messam is still a work horse and covers a lot of open field in his defence and carries the ball well to the adv line. i'm still not convinced that mccaw has to give up his #7. dont know of anyone who would make a better openside than the king. aaronSmith was shown not to be a halfback thats able to play behind a losing pack. piri and perenara have shown that they can still perform well behind a forward pack going back wards. aaron has a lot to learn yet but is doing well for a rookie. cruden is still an understudy to carter. carter missed a couple of tackles but he's still the best of the best. i admire cruden but no one is near carters class. all in all AB's have had an awesome season that all the other teams would die for. theres still alot ot work on but the future is promising. this loss to england has thrown everyone a bone so the dont give up and all think they can beat the AB's. just what was needed to to keep all the other teams interested and hungry.