Steve McNamara says that England fell prey to their own mistakes in Four Nations Final
In the post-match press conference for the Gillette Four Nations Final on November 19, English coach, Steve McNamara, explained that his side had to pay heavily for the errors made during the clash.
While expressing his thoughts about their 8-30 defeat against series’ favourites, Australia, McNamara said, "We killed ourselves in the last 20 minutes, it is as simple as that. We got ourselves back to 8-8 in a game where we had absorbed so much pressure.
We had them in the position we wanted them at half-time. We were right in the mix in the game. At the start of the second half it was set-for-set and they cracked first - we kicked a penalty. But we started to make some errors on the back of that and they
made the most of it."
He added further that his side was strong but their mistakes during the final battle proved to be a major blow.
England had improved on their game, down the length of the Four Nations campaign and this was acknowledged by their coach, who was otherwise not very happy with the way his side had played the series’ final game.
He further added that his side had prepared well but despite that, they failed to work well together as a team. After pointing out that his side had lagged behind in displaying a good team effort, the coach stressed upon the fact that his team has improved
a lot.
He said that when they began their Four Nations’ journey, they were the third favourite team amongst the participating teams. However, the fact that they overwhelmed New Zealand with a 28-6 win in the sudden–death encounter to book their spot against Australia
for the final of the series, says a lot about the English side’s real calibre.
Red Roses failed to put up a strong fight against Kangaroos. However, their first half performance was still better as there half-time score was 6-8 with Australia in the lead. The scores were levelled during the 55th minute of the clash, but
after that point, Australia stole the show. England offered no resistance at all to the Roos’ scoring spree that led to their sixth successive Elland Road victory.
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