TOUR MATCH:ENGLAND HEAD home from New Zealand having lost their last game of the tour but claiming to have found something that should help them when they return for the World Cup in 15 months' time.
Not for the first time in their 100 years, New Zealand Maori upstaged a touring side, but even after conceding four tries in Napier – three of them to the wing Hosea Gear – the England camp was claiming more pluses than minuses from the five-game tour, which ended with two wins, two defeats and a draw.
Danny Care, the scrumhalf, even went as far as to suggest that a new philosophy had been formed in the past week. “We came here [Napier] to play, we came to throw the ball around,” he said. “We wanted to play, that’s the new philosophy we’ve got.
“We play if it’s on. The tries that Ben Youngs and Chris Ashton scored [in last week’s Test win over Australia] were off the cuff. But players are backing themselves and that’s the philosophy we’ve got here; if you back yourself and it’s on, then the whole team is behind you.”
If true it marks a considerable sea change in English thinking. After the Six Nations, Delon Armitage could be heard complaining that a welter of safety-first instructions from the manager, Martin Johnson, had left him “playing like a robot”.
Yesterday Johnson did not recognise Care’s new philosophy, insisting: “I don’t think so. It’s having that confidence and belief in yourself. We’ve always backed the guys to have a go for it. We should have backed ourselves a bit more in the second half. It rankles losing that game because there was a definite chance to win it. I am a bit grumpy.”
The England manager did, however, list some of those who had impressed on tour and who would be bucking for places in the 32-strong elite squad that he will name next month and which will obviously underline his World Cup thinking.
“We got better and better all tour, but didn’t quite make it at the end,” Johnson said. “So many things have come out of the tour – player-wise, team-wise – it’s a bit annoying not to have finished it off.”
Listed on Johnson’s roll call were the obvious candidates such as Youngs and Dan Cole, but the locks Dave Attwood and Geoff Parling plus Dan Ward-Smith, and Phil Dowson and Brad Barritt, the pair who had to be called up from the Saxons’ Churchill Cup squad all got honourable mentions.
There also seemed to be special praise for Charlie Hodgson, the Sale outhalf who took plenty of flak when England were last in New Zealand.
Gear had run in two tries at the start of the second half, and England’s patience and structure vanished with the departure of Hodgson. Maori scored 18 unanswered points to round off a centenary that had seen them also beat Ireland and New Zealand Barbarians.
NEW ZEALAND MAORI: Newlands, Flynn, Afeaki, Triggs, Hoeata, Lowe, Latimer, Messam, Smith, Brett, Gear, McAlister, Sweeney, Maitland, Robinson. Replacements: Murray for Newlands (53 mins), Coles for Flynn (57 mins), Tipuna for Smith (57 mins).
ENGLAND: D. Armitage; Strettle, Tait, Barritt, Ashton; C. Hodgson, Care; Flatman, Chuter, Doran-Jones, Atwood, Parling, Robshaw, S. Armitage, Dowson. Replacements: Geraghty for C. Hodgson (47 mins), Youngs for Care (60 mins), Webber for Chuter (48 mins), Cole for Doran-Jones (60 mins), Ward-Smith for Atwood (60 mins), Haskell for S. Armitage (60 mins).
