England 22 New Zealand 30: England ponder how to make final push towards greatness following defeat to All Blacks

Robshaw and Co were close to their own summit, but the last few steps are always hellishly tough against a force so extreme as the All Blacks

England fly-half Owen Farrell kicked 17 points against New Zealand and must be regarded as one of the best goal-kickers in the world (GETTY IMAGES)

It was back in the late spring of 2010 that Josh Lewsey, one of the chosen few who had wrenched the World Cup from Australian hands seven years previously, was forced to abandon an attempt to climb Mount Everest by the fearsomely demanding Mallory-Irvine route. The former England full-back was high on the north-west ridge when his oxygen apparatus went wonky on him, and that particular stretch is no place to be when your kit is playing up. Lewsey’s red rose successors may now understand how he felt.

Chris Robshaw and company were close to their own summit at the weekend, but the last few steps are always hellishly tough for those playing rugby at so rarefied a level against a force so extreme as the All Blacks. Especially when some crucial pieces of equipment have started to misfire or – even worse – gone missing entirely. In the final analysis at Twickenham, it was the New Zealanders who had the right stuff to hand.

To be specific, the tourists had genius to fall back on. The tries they scored in securing a 13th straight victory and moving to within 80 minutes of calendar-year perfection were classics of their kind: the richest possible mix of vision, pace, timing, sleight of hand and utter ruthlessness. The off-loads at the heart of the first and third of them – Kieran Read’s to Julian Savea; Ma’a Nonu’s to the same recipient – could not conceivably have been better executed.

“Sometimes, you do look at it from your seat on the replacements’ bench or from your position out there on the field and think: ‘Jeez, that was pretty special,’ ” said Aaron Cruden, the fly-half from Palmerston North, who has been understudying the playmaking maestro Dan Carter these last three years. “The good thing about growing up in New Zealand is that all the kids are out there trying to throw passes like the ones you saw today. That natural flair is an important part of our rugby and the mindset among the people at the top is that it shouldn’t be coached out of us. It helps to know you’re not going to get the bullet if you back your instincts.”

Without their flair for rugby invention, the All Blacks could not have won on Saturday. For one thing, they wouldn’t have opened up a 17-3 lead in the first place; for another, they would not have found a way to win the game a second time, from 22-20 down to finish 30-22 up, after finding themselves on the painful end of a 40-minute battering from an outstanding English pack who spent the second and third quarters of the game establishing something approaching complete control.

Savea’s opening try, scored inside two minutes from the first set-piece restart of the game, was a case in point, resulting as it did from a leap of the imagination as much as from the mastery of its execution. What other team would have placed Carter at the front of the line-out instead of in midfield – a position from which he slipped almost unnoticed into a short-side attacking formation to create the hint of an overlap? What other team would then have used him as the spare man in a miss-move, instead of relying on his sublime handling skills to maximise opportunities in the narrowest of channels? Add in Read’s contribution – a reverse-angled, one-handed flip so cleverly disguised that it left three England defenders tackling a man who no longer had the ball – and you’re looking at rugby in its most highly-developed state.

As things stand, England cannot scale such heights: they do not possess the strike power in space, the shock and awe capability, to match a side as good as New Zealand, try for brilliant try. Until they piece together an outside back combination worthy of the name – one in which Mike Brown, the Harlequins full-back, can function as effectively in the opposition 22 as he does in his own – the good things currently being accomplished by Nos 1-12 inclusive will be wasted.

The England backroom staff know this to be the case; privately, they admitted as much on Saturday night. Publicly, the head coach Stuart Lancaster acknowledged that his team were still looking to “take the last steps”, adding that such steps were the toughest ones of all. We can assume that Manu Tuilagi, the Leicester centre, and Marland Yarde, the London Irish wing, will return to the starting line-up the moment they are fit to do so. Had they been playing on Saturday, this tourniquet-tight contest would have been tighter still.

There were disappointments for England as they ran down the curtain on their autumn programme: they committed the capital crime of giving the All Black soft yards to run in during the opening exchanges; their line-out started malfunctioning the moment Dylan Hartley left the field with a bruised lung that required hospital treatment; some of their tactical kicking bordered on the suicidal. But as Lancaster rightly argued, these were heavily outweighed by the positive aspects of the performance. Twenty games shy of the home World Cup in 2015, a formidable pack is beginning to take shape; Owen Farrell must now be ranked among the very best goal-kickers in the sport; and Billy Twelvetrees has proved himself capable of filling the Will Greenwood-sized hole that opened up in the red rose midfield shortly after the 2003 triumph.

Most of all, England are now a team made of the right stuff in terms of rugby’s abstractions: attitude and desire, commitment and self-belief. An hour after the final whistle on Saturday, the ferociously competitive Farrell could be heard talking of his own bitter disappointment: namely, the fact that England will not be playing the All Blacks again this weekend.

“They’re a clinical team, New Zealand: when we struggled to find a way out of our own 22 towards the end of the game, they pounced. But to come back from 17-3 down to lead in the final quarter – to show such fight and willingness to work for each other… I think that was brilliant. Look at the penalties they were giving away and then tell me they didn’t feel under pressure. They’ve been together a long time, that All Blacks team, and they’ve played a lot of rugby, but we’re building. Next summer, we have three Tests down there. What better tour is there to go on? I can’t wait. If selected, of course.”

Sadly, England will probably be under-strength in the first Test of that trip, thanks to the proximity of the Premiership final. But the next two? They’ll be seriously interesting – even if the “genius gap” appears unbridgeable.

Positive feedback

Billy Twelvetrees (below)

Ticked the boxes skill-wise and also had the strength of character to stick with it after a rough start against Australia.

Courtney Lawes

England’s new line-out caller also contributed some old-style hits in open field. Athletic, ruthless, as hard as nails.

12. Billy Twelvetrees - (GETTY IMAGES)

Negative vibes

Chris Ashton

Low on confidence and out of form. The kindest thing would be to drop him.

Tom Youngs

The Lions hooker, a bonus last year, has become a liability with his poor line-out throwing.