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England have burgled an outrageous 25-25 draw with New Zealand with an extraordinary late turnaround having trailed almost all match.
England scored three tries in the last ten minutes to recover from 25-11 down at Twickenham on Saturday.
But there were questions over England’s decision to kick the ball into touch from the last kick off reception, with Marcus Smith deciding to accept the draw rather than push for a win.
“It’s always up to the players,” said England coach Eddie Jones of the decision. “The referee was being very hard on the attacking rucks so there was a lot of sense in the decision they made
Captain Owen Farrell added: “I think it depended where we had the ball. It’s a difficult place to go from. They had bodies piling in, we had men out. It was the right decision I think. “
But New Zealand coach Ian Foster seemed bemused.
“Was I surprised? Yeah, I was,” said Foster. All I know is if you flipped it over I would have liked our guys to have a crack so I am not sure what their tactics were but to be fair to them, they were running hot for seven, eight minutes.
“Things were going really well and they probably felt like getting back to a draw was a massive achievement in that time and so they probably decided to take it.”
A late brace from Will Stuart – the first England prop to score two tries in a match – and a Freddie Steward cross helped them to a result which will nonetheless do little to quieten critics of their Australian coach Eddie Jones.
Flanker Dalton Papali’i opened the scoring for New Zealand after just four minutes, appearing to read an English strike play off the tail of their lineout and intercepting Jack van Poortvliet’s pass to run 45 metres untouched.
They added a second minutes later, Codie Taylor bundling over from a lineout after England were penalised at the scrum, and the hosts were in bad shape at 0-14 down inside ten minutes.
It was nearly 21-0 but a third try was denied after video review due to a foul by scorer Rieko Ioane on Owen Farrell in the build-up.
(Photo by Warren Little/Getty Images)
Nevertheless New Zealand were 17-3 up at the break and 25-6 up midway through the second half with Ioane scoring.
With seemingly nothing to lose, England suddenly exploded out of nowhere, Marcus Smith skipping through a gap to set up a close range Stuart try and Freddie Steward rounding off a free-flowing attack to add another.
The Twickenham crowd were delirious when Stuart went over again in the final minute, with Smith converting to complete a remarkable comeback.
Foster paid tribute to England’s comeback.
“Its 25-all, there is a lot of drama, some close calls with TMOs but you have to take your hat off to England. I am proud of the first 70 (minutes), we played the kind of rugby we have been searching for,” said Foster.
“I thought we dominated for large parts of it. Test matches are tough, people make too much out of something and I think we are building strongly but we did not nail the last 10 minutes.”
Jones summed it up this way: “I thought New Zealand were superb in the first half, they were aggressive they won the ruck and when they had the opportunities they were able to score. We hung in there a lot and you always get the chance to attack, and we had that at the end.
“We put in some of the things we have worked on – running straighter, attacking gaps, quicker support play and it was fantastic.”
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