Former England hooker Brian Moore thinks head coach Steve Borthwick should highlight the All Blacks’ cheating in the scrum during the opening test.
Writing in his column for The Telegraph, Moore said: “England’s scrum got on the wrong side of the referee but, as pinpointed by Sky Sports’ co-commentator David Flatman, that was because Nika Amashukeli failed to notice that Ethan de Groot was illegally shifting outside Will Stuart and driving straight upwards.
“I am not knocking the Kiwi loosehead – you get away with what you can in the front row. However, to get a handle on this you either have to make it a flashpoint that the referee has to deal with, or Stuart has to bore into the opposition hooker and drive inside De Groot, both of which, by the way, are also illegal.
“It is not the MO of Borthwick to publicly complain about this sort of thing, but he should at least raise it via official channels in private.”
He then went onto take aim at fly-half Marcus Smith over his goal kicking.
Moore wrote: “What needs to be understood is that to this small shift you have to add factors like breakdown mistakes.
“England were mostly good in this area but breakdown errors in the 45th, 53rd, 56th and 68th minutes added to their difficulties and because of these marginal losses they fell short.
“It would be correct to claim that had Marcus Smith kicked his goals England might have won but New Zealand also missed kicks. What must have disappointed Smith most is that he did not strike the ball well, on top of the inaccuracy.”
Five players who FLOPPED this weekend, including England star
Here, we examine five players who fell short of expectations for their respective countries this weekend…
#1. Josh Hathaway
Rugby Pass 2/10: “A bit of a shocker sadly. Showed inexperience with an overcooked kick to space early on which landed squarely in touch. Missed five tackles in total and simply walked into touch when receiving the ball near the Wallaby touchline. Not a day to remember.”
Wales Online 5/10: “Put one kick out on the full while his loose punt up-field also resulted in Tom Wright scoring the decisive try for the Wallabies. Showed signs of his threat with ball in hand but it didn’t come his way often enough.”