Eddie Jones accepted that England “have only got ourselves to blame” after they blew a seven-point lead in the final quarter to lose the Calcutta Cup 20-17 to Scotland.
Scotland were awarded a penalty try when Luke Cowan-Dickie slapped the ball into touch from a Finn Russell cross-kick with Darcy Graham waiting to score.
With Cowan-Dickie in the sin-bin, that penalty try levelled the score, with further England mistakes contributing to Scotland taking the lead with eight minutes to go. England botched two lineouts – one of them taken by prop Joe Marler – and failed to score after winning the ball at the scrum.
That scrum followed a series of resets in a period that Jones believed saw “the referee become pretty influential”. England’s new captain Tom Curry felt his team had dominance at those scrums, even though referee Ben O'Keeffe did not give a penalty.
“We have only got ourselves to blame,” said Jones.
“We are massively disappointed we lost and Scotland deserved to win but we dominated a lot of the game but didn’t get the points out of the domination. At the end of the day rugby is a pretty simple game, if you dominate you have to get points and you have to get enough to be in front of the opposition at the end.
“It was three points at the end and the referee becomes pretty influential in those situations. The result is the result and it is tough for us to start the tournament like that. We had a good preparation and played with a lot of drive and determination. We will go to Italy next week and be even better.
“For a young team I thought we fought really well, we just didn’t get the result. In the last game against South Africa we got the penalty at the end, they got the penalty at the end this time. That is the tightness of Test rugby.”
Jones said his players were “supporting” Cowan-Dickie, and defended his decision to take fly-half Marcus Smith – who scored all of England’s points – off after 63 minutes for George Ford.
“It is a 23-man squad and we thought George could come on and do a job for us the last 20 minutes,” he said.
Speaking to the BBC, Jones said: “We don’t apportion any blame to Luke. He was just contesting the ball and the referee adjudicated it was a yellow card so we accept that and get on with it.”
Captain Tom Curry said: “If you’re going to win big games, you can’t rely on just one moment in the game. It’s a game of 80 minutes. We need to reflect and be better ourselves.”
