All Black McKenzie sets example and challenge for ambitious England

Quilter Nations Series: England v New Zealand

Venue: Allianz Stadium, Twickenham Date: Saturday, 15 November Kick-off: 15:10 GMT

For 20 minutes at Murrayfield last weekend, little was going right for Damian McKenzie.

The 30-year-old, 5ft 8in, 12 stone, fair hair, fresh face, looks a little out of place among the flying breeze blocks elsewhere on the pitch.

Initially, after coming off the bench in the 44th minute against Scotland, he felt it too.

“Kyle Steyn had just scored for them when I came on,” he said.

“We kicked off, they put up a box kick from nine, I went up to catch it and wasn’t able to. I knocked my head as well.

“Blood started pouring out. We were most of the time on defence. We got a scrum, I kicked it out, but didn’t make too many metres.

“Then I missed a tackle on Darcy Graham, luckily Cam Roigard saved the try in the corner, but I cut my chin. That started bleeding and I thought, ‘here we go, it’s going to be a long last 15 minutes’.”

It was a crucial 15 minutes as well.

At that point, the score was 17-17. The All Blacks were a man down via Wallace Sititi’s yellow card. Scotland were sniffing history.

Then McKenzie, bloodied, bandaged and looking like death, came to life.

A sweetly-struck kick sailed over Steyn and dribbled into touch five metres from Scotland’s line for a 50:22.

From the resulting line-out the ball was spun wide, McKenzie took an offload, bolted for the corner and, brilliantly shrugging off the covering Blair Kinghorn and George Turner with the touchline looming, managed to ground the ball with an astonishing, pirouetting finish.

“Luckily my sprigs [studs] managed to stay in the ground,” said McKenzie, who also landed a late long-range penalty to put the game beyond doubt.

Keeping his feet on the ground is one of McKenzie’s many skills.

A dazzling runner, with a jagging step and sharp acceleration, fewer than 30 of his 72 All Blacks caps have come as a starter.

He has been shunted around the line-up and along the bench, with Beauden Barratt and Will Jordan edging him out as the starting fly-half and full-back respectively.

But McKenzie, the son of Southland dairy farmers, has been resilient, selfless and, as ever, highly skillful.

Just like his team.

New Zealand may not have the aura of old. A decade ago, they visited Twickenham to collect their second successive Rugby World Cup with a team crammed with living legends.

Richie McCaw, Dan Carter, Kieran Read and the rest played 133 matches during the 2010s and lost only 13.

You only have to go back to summer 2022 to count up as many defeats for the current team.

England captain Maro Itoje knows that his team’s nine-Test winning run has not passed through such dangerous territory.

“There are the weeks we and I live for,” he told the BBC’s Rugby Union Weekly. “It is a huge game, a huge occasion.

“It is a game we are very much looking forward to and I think we are ready to play them.”

It is Itoje’s first time facing New Zealand as captain, but he played every minute of last year’s three meetings.

All of those ended in with Kiwi wins, and the All Blacks and white shirts at opposite ends of the emotional spectrum.

England come in with momentum and a plan however; a high-energy bench, to counter the last-quarter fade that afflicted them in 2024, and aerial ace wings, to replicate the two cross-kick tries plundered at Eden Park last year.

Head coach Steve Borthwick knows also, in order to finally bridge the small margin between the sides, there is a non-negotiable.

“The players are going to have to suffer because that is what it takes against teams like this,” he said.