England rue first half collapse against New Zealand
It was a tough start to life as the new England captain for James Graham.
In his first match as the newly appointed skipper, following injuries to Jamie Peacock and Adrian Morley, his side paid a huge price for a mediocre first-half performance, eventually going down 24-10 to New Zealand in the opening game of the Four Nations.
The visitors found themselves 18-0 just after half-time following a 40 minutes filled with mistakes and handling errors.Junior Sa'u and Lance Hohaia took advantage of England’s sloppiness early on by crossing over for well taken tries and Shaun Kenny-Dowall added a third just minutes after the break.
"We spoke at half-time about getting back into it but we left a mountain too big to climb,” Graham told the BBC. "We started to come back in the second half. Maybe if one or two decisions had gone our way it'd have been different."
Indeed they did come back, but it was always a tough ask. James Roby scored a quick-fire double mid-way through the half as England sprung into life, but the moment that must have killed the comeback was a controversially disallowed try scored by Kevin Brown.
England trailed 18-10 when Brown got on the end of Sam Tomkins' clever grubber kick. But the standoff's effort was ruled out by video referee Bill Harrigan for an infringement against Kiwi half-back Greg Eastwood.
Brown, who was far from happy with the decision, said: "I was very disappointed because I thought I got the ball down. I suppose it's the letter of the law if I touched him, but he's probably 20 stone and I'm half his size. So if I pushed him I must be quite strong to get him out of the way.”
Just to rub salt into England’s wounds, New Zealand scored again through Benji Marshall just minutes after the controversial incident.
In the weekend’s other fixture Australia showed why they are heavily fancied to win the Four Nations, by wiping the floor with Papa New Guinea by 42-0.
The rugby league minnows put up a sterling effort in defence, and would have been happy that the scoreline was kept to just two figures, which suggests just how one-sided this contest was.
Billy Slater, Brent Tate, Cooper Cronk, Willie Tonga (2) and Brett Morris all scored in the first half, whilst Cameron Smith added a sixth before captain Darren Lockyer got in on the act to complete the scoring.
Next up for the Aussies are England on Sunday and Papa New Guniea take on New Zealand on the Saturday.
Tags: