Sport

Ashton remains defiant in face of pointed criticism

Match reaction: England coach Brian Ashton refused to be cowed in the face of some pointed criticism at the press conference…

John O'Sullivan at the Stade de France
Sat Sept 15 2007 - 01:00

Match reaction:England coach Brian Ashton refused to be cowed in the face of some pointed criticism at the press conference in the wake of England 's 36-0 defeat - the first time they haven't scored in a test match since 1998 - against South Africa at the Stade de France.

The very first question he faced inquired as to why England's performance had dipped from what was an unacceptable display in beating the USA. Ashton bristled: "I am afraid I don't agree with that. I think you are way off the mark. I won't accept that it was a worse performance than against America. If we had played like that again then we would have had 80 points put on us.

"I thought we showed great resilience in the second half but you can't give one of the top two sides in the world a 20-point start and expect to recover. They played extremely well for the full 80 minutes and there was no doubt they were the better side. We didn't help ourselves with our performance in the first half."

England captain Martin Corry admitted to being "shell shocked". He added: "We will give ourselves 24 hours to get over this and then focus on Samoa. We went into this game expecting to win and we will prepare the same way and have the same mindset for the next game. We have to look at ourselves rather than their (South Africa's) performance.

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"We gifted South Africa the first three scores; they didn't have to work for them. I thought we put it up to them more in the second half. There were still errors in our performance but we struck to the task and you couldn't fault the effort."

Ashton was then asked if he was concerned about the fact that England were having problems scoring tries. "I thought we created three good opportunities but not taking two of them was down to poor decision making. That can happen when confidence is down in the middle of the game.

"We are going to have to pick ourselves up and produce that big performance against Samoa next Saturday. That match isn't going to go away."

England fullback Jason Robinson suffered a damaged hamstring while Jamie Noon sustained medial knee ligament damage.

South African coach expressed his "delight" before having a pop at the English media whom he said had built up the England team during the week and had led people to believe that a big performance was forthcoming.