Steve McNamara has expressed his pride despite England’s 9-2 Test series defeat to New Zealand.
A staunch defensive effort from England saw them restrict the Kiwis to just a penalty goal in the first-half despite their line coming under intense scrutiny from the Kiwis throughout. However, an early second-half try through Shaun Kenny-Dowall proved to be the difference between the two sides as England failed to score a single try throughout the match.
And McNamara admitted that a series of errors, particularly in the first-half, left his side with too much to do once they had the ball in hand.
“It was a really, really tough game,” said McNamara.
“We just did too much defending. We took too much energy out of ourselves and we didn’t have enough energy when we had the ball. I’m really proud of the effort but we do need to be better with the ball.
“They’re a great team, we’ve said it all along. We had to play extremely well to beat them last week and they’ve had to do the same to beat us.
“We kept giving New Zealand a bit of a start to their sets with some of the errors that we made and some of our choices on last plays. We’ll go back to work next week and have a good look at it and be ready to go at Wigan.”
