Autumn Nations: Steve Borthwick urges England to ‘accelerate learning’ after defeat to New Zealand by ‘post width’

England had two chances to win the Autumn Nations thriller in the dying minutes thanks to George Ford’s boot, but both his penalty and goal fell short, handing New Zealand a narrow victory.

“There’s no doubt there are things we can improve on, but I’d say the players put in a superb effort today,” Borthwick said afterward.

“I think they are two very good teams. Before the game we talked about our path to improvement and development, and ultimately it all came down to the width of the post. A little more to the side and we will win the game.”

England had to battle in the first half, with four Marcus Smith penalties keeping the hosts in touch after tries from Mark Telea and Will Jordan.

England came out of the blocks to start the second half, finding themselves with an eight-point lead on the hour mark after a try from Immanuel Fahey-Waboso and another conversion from Smith.

Damian McKenzie put New Zealand within five points 13 minutes before Telea’s second try, and McKenzie’s successful conversion gave them a two-point lead with three minutes remaining.

“I think there are huge positives,” Borthwick said. “They have had more games in their starting 15 than we have in 23. The reality is we have a young team that is still developing and let me be clear: we are all disappointed, we wanted to win this game and thought we would win game.

“We put ourselves in position to win the game, now we need to speed up our learning curve to make sure those narrow wins work in our favor. We’ll take a closer look at this later. There were some pretty clear moments in those final 20 minutes, but we’ll also look at how well this team played against a very experienced New Zealand side.

“I’m not going to stand here and say it’s OK because we lost the game and we expected to win the game. “I thought we could and should win the game, so we’ll try to learn from it and improve for next week.”

England will be looking to bounce back against out-of-form Australia at Twickenham’s Allianz Stadium next Saturday, while New Zealand make the short trip across the Irish Sea to Dublin to face Ireland on Friday night.