England edged out by All Blacks
By Mark Stevens
10/11/18
Eddie Jones refused to be drawn on the controversial decision which denied England a memorable win over New Zealand at Twickenham on Saturday.
England - who included Exeter Chiefs quintet Ben Moon, Henry Slade, Alec Hepburn, Harry Williams and Jack Nowell in their match-day squad - were trailing 16-15 after 76 minutes when Courtney Lawes charged down TJ Perenara’s kick and Sam Underhill scooped up the ball before surging to a solo try.
However, South African Television Match Official Marius Jonker and French referee Jerome Garces reviewed the incident and decided Lawes was offside.
Jones said: “I don’t comment on those decisions. I’ll leave it up to that guy. If he can’t take the right decision with 10 replays, who can?
“Sometimes the game loves you and sometimes the game doesn’t love you. We’ll get some love from the game further down the track.”
It was a first meeting between England and New Zealand, winners of the last two World Cups, in four years and many expected the All Blacks to trounce their injury-depleted hosts.
But afterwards it was Jones who insisted England were on course for World Cup glory after the agonising defeat.
Tries from Chris Ashton and Dylan Hartley helped England to a 15-0 lead after 25 minutes, which the All Blacks eroded with a flourish at the end of the first half.
Beauden Barrett’s penalty saw New Zealand take the lead for the first time in the game after 60 minutes and they did not relinquish it.
Jones accentuated the positives and looked ahead to next year’s World Cup in Japan.
“We’re disappointed, but we’re excited about where we’re going,” Jones added. “We’ll learn a lot from that today. We had opportunities to win the game, we didn’t take them, they did. They deserved to win the game.
“It’s a really good step forward. You benchmark yourself against New Zealand. New Zealand are the best team in the world.
“We’ve got to fix the things that didn’t work today. If we do that, we’re on the road to being the best team in the world, which is what we set out to be.”
“I thought we played the final 20 (minutes) exceptionally well,” Jones added. “That’s where New Zealand generally run away from teams and they couldn’t. They couldn’t break us. If we’d kept going for another five minutes, we maybe would’ve got them.”
