Cowan's verdict: We're still patchy

All Blacks v England

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The All Blacks perform the haka before the test against England at Twickenham.

All Blacks trounce England

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DOTTING DOWN: The All Blacks created several try-scoring chances but halfback Jimmy Cowan was the only one to touch down against England.

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The Southlander couldn't lie. Or at least he couldn't embellish. So for the true appraisal of the All Blacks performance against England it was hard to go past the only man who scored a try all day at Twickenham.

And as per usual Jimmy Cowan told it as it was.

Which is Jimmy to a tee. He is what he is. It is what it is.

The 30-year-old reformed bad boy is back on track - but that doesn't mean he's happy when the game gets a bit medieval on him. And it did that in the first half at Twickenham yesterday when Cowan received ball about the same time as he did Lewis Moody and Tom Croft. It was a struggle.

So while Graham Henry called it the best All Blacks performance of the tour as they defeated a pretty ordinary England team 19-6, and the other coaches reached for the positives, and we all celebrated special things like two-test Zac Guilford looking like he's been playing international rugby all his life, and Dan Carter and Mils Muliaina earning their spots in the rugby pantheon, the reality was the All Blacks won another test in which they didn't play that well.

 Didn't have to play that well either.

"It's not a happy changing-room," said Cowan. "We feel we can play a lot better. There was probably two factors --  the weather and  them coming at us a bit. We've put that behind us now and we're looking forward to Marseille."

This is when Cowan gets a little frustrated. To be fair, he's been spouting a pretty consistent message for a while now.

"We're close but we're not quite reaching it," said Cowan of a performance when the All Blacks were locked 6-6 at the half, before the halfback's 51st-minute try broke the game open. "In patches we played good, we were trying to spread the ball... but next week will be a different story. The French like to use the ball, and hopefully we'll get a good flow of rugby going and going anyway, Cowan remains hopeful if not exactly certain.

"We're not far away," he said. "We're not quite over the hump yet but you can feel it coming. And we were probably unlucky we didn't' finish them off with a couple of tries in that second half..."

Cowan, on this form, should be compulsory post-match fodder. He isn't.

"I don't think we helped our cause and England didn't help our cause either with killing a lot of ball at ruck time, and just lying over the ball. We couldn't get flow into our game.

"Then again we were a bit slow on the reload, and we just couldn't quite finish off that final pass."

Cowan, of course is right on it. This was no vintage All Black performance. Not by a long shot. They coughed up too many attacking opportunities, and kept a tradesmanlike England team in the contest for way too long. 

But Cowan's try, as the passes finally stuck, did help matters.

"I thought it was on all game on that short side. Siti was there several times though he didn't quite get there through the slow reload.

"In the second half we managed to get ball to Siti, he created, did his magic and I was on the end of a soft pass and managed to dot down."

Cowan was also loving the high stakes approach to the looming clash of the hemispheres as the All Blacks move to Marseille.               

"Obviously it's going to be the game of the tour, isn't it? They touched us up in the early part of the year. As a team we're looking forward to it and it should be a great match."

Here's hoping.

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