Sir Clive Woodward was critical of an expensive decision made by Steve Borthwick during England’s recent defeat to the All Blacks.
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England’s 21-year wait for an away win over New Zealand continues, but Steve Borthwick’s team has shown promising signs of improvement on their summer tour.
The campaign started with a comfortable victory over Japan last month before heading to New Zealand, where England narrowly lost both Tests against the All Blacks.
Saturday’s 24-17 defeat at Eden Park came after their initial 16-15 loss in Dunedin.
Woodward began: “Before the game at Eden Park, I wrote that England must learn from the first Test where they played not to lose rather than win the match in the last half hour.
“I was interested to hear Steve Borthwick reference exactly that in his pre-match interview on Sky.”
He added: “Unfortunately, exactly the same thing happened again.
“For the second weekend running, England were outstanding for 50 minutes and just too passive in thought and deed for the final half hour.
“This is something the team really must learn from and correct. I really didn’t understand why Marcus Smith was substituted. I thought he was having an outstanding game at No 10.
“Smith was controlling the match. He created two brilliant tries for Immanuel Feyi-Waboso and Tommy Freeman with excellent kicks and I thought his game management was good.
“I’ve got nothing against Fin Smith who is a very good player, but he couldn’t impact proceedings in his time on the field and a change just was not required, especially in such a pivotal position.
“It might explain why England dropped away so noticeably.”
The Telegraph ranked England’s five worst players this summer, shock name features
The form of Maro Itoje, Marcus Smith, and Immanuel Feyi-Waboso stood out, but below we look at the most disappointing players according to The Telegraph, highlighting some sub-par performances.
Theo Dan 5/10
Saracens hooker Theo Dan is capped at England U18 and U20 level. He graduated into the north London club’s senior academy in 2019 and made his Premiership debut against Gloucester in 2022.
Since then, he has been a regular feature in Saracens teams throughout their domestic and European campaigns and was a member of the team that won the Gallagher Premiership title at the end of the 2022/23 season.
Dan was called up to Steve Borthwick’s squad for the 2023 Rugby World Cup in France and featured heavily in the squad that went on to reach the semi-finals of the tournament.
They wrote: “Needs to learn a better tackle technique after suffering a head injury in the second Test.”