Offering no excuses, coach Steve Hansen was glad a shock record defeat by England would burst the bubble of hype around his world champion All Blacks going into 2013.
The young England team stunned New Zealand with a 38-21 victory at Twickenham, ending their unbeaten streak dating right back to the Tri-Nations final loss to Australia in Brisbane before last year’s World Cup.
It was England’s first win over the All Blacks in nine years and their largest margin of victory over New Zealand, surpassing the 13 point gap achieved in a 13-0 win back in 1936.
Hansen and his captain Richie McCaw said there was no doubt the better team won, praising England’s complete performance in their last Test of the year.
And Hansen welcomed an end to some over-the-top hyperbole generated by the unbeaten streak, seeing it as a chance to refocus his men next season.
“It won’t do us any harm, because it will stop people telling us we’re the greatest team ever and we get down to being an All Black side that has to work hard,” Hansen said.
“They’ve been doing that, to be fair, but it just puts a couple of wee rocks under the towel at the beach, which will be good.”
England had been criticised in the build-up for being too predictable up front and lacking a cutting edged behind the scrum.
Few expected an England side fielding a starting 15 with just 208 combined Test caps between them to challenge opponents who boasted an All Blacks’ record 789 caps and who had swept through their tour in imperious style against Scotland (51-22), Italy (42-10) and Wales (33-10).
But three second-half tries from backs Brad Barritt, Manu Tuilagi and Chris Ashton, saw England simultaneously stun and delight a capacity Twickenham crowd of more than 81,000 as they staved off an All Blacks’ fightback after the visitors closed to within a point at 15-14.
“They played a really good game of footy,” said Hansen.
“They moved the ball when they needed, they kicked well and they put us under pressure with a good chase, and their set piece was good.”
“I don’t think it was just a northern hemisphere style of bash and crash. They actually played good rugby union.”
England captain Chris Robshaw said the criticism the team had received following defeats by Australia and South Africa spurred them to the win.
Flanker Robshaw, much criticised for his decision to go for goal with a late penalty against the Springboks, rather than opt for an attacking line-out that could have led to a match-winning try, was understandably delighted after what was only England’s seventh win in 35 Tests against New Zealand dating back to 1905.
“People had written us off,” Robshaw said.
“That fuelled the fire. Everyone ran out there and believed we could do it.”
Man-of-the-match Tom Wood, a colleague of Robshaw in an England back-row that excelled themselves against their New Zealand counterparts, said: “This is an absolutely brilliant day. We put our hearts and souls into that.”
