Eddie Has To Stay For Four Years Or Go

Big matches are tough for a reason – they are so intense and full of pressure and that’s when you have to produce your best performance. England had done that until this final 80 minutes of asking.

- Jeremy Guscott

The quarter-final was well prepared and executed as was the semi-final, but the final just didn’t happen for England.

Matches like this swing on big momentum changes and whereas most went England’s way in the semifinal, that wasn’t the case in the final.

Against New Zealand a big shift was after they conceded a try from the error at the lineout, a few minutes later they got themselves into a position to win a penalty to stem the All Black flow.

However, one of the big defining moments yesterday was during the lead up to the penalty that made the score 6-6. England went through 20odd phases, and just under three minutes of continuous play, when South Africa held firm in defence preventing a try. That was huge. If England had scored there and converted, they would have gone ahead and maybe found momentum and confidence to continue where they left off against New Zealand.

It was an opportunity missed and knowing how to score when in those game-changing situations is the next adaption for this side. It was compounded by small errors, such as from the restart when the mistimed lift on Maro Itoje let the ball go beyond him to Tom Curry and there was a knock-on. From the resulting scrum, South Africa won a penalty which they knocked over. Those sorts of shifts hurt unless you counter and England didn’t have a response to that.

They found it hard to get positive energy without so many of those big hits from last weekend to send the South Africans backwards. They just didn’t win enough of the collisions.