James Haskell has urged England fans to keep the faith and back results to come under Martin Johnson.
England were comprehensively beaten 32-6 by New Zealand at Twickenham, hot on the heels of Autumn International losses to Australia and South Africa.
But Haskell insisted that England were capable of turning things around as Johnson instils his ideas within the team.
“Anyone watching at home who cares about English rugby should know we have the passion, we have the ability,” the flanker said. “It comes down to execution and ruthlessness. We will do it.
“When you’re building something new, it takes time.”
England were made to pay for some indiscipline as the All Blacks built a 12-3 half-time lead before running in a pair of tries after the break.
“We were penalised quite a bit and you can’t afford to have that against a side like New Zealand,” Haskell said. “The scoreline was pretty flattering to the opposition. At times we were pretty good.”
However, Haskell refused to criticise the referee despite England being shown four yellow cards.
“At this level you’ve got play to the referee, play to his interpretation. We didn’t do that today and it’s very disappointing.”
Johnson admitted that the yellow cards played a key role in England’s defeat.
“The sin bins didn’t help,” he said. “To have four guys in the one game is pretty unusual. There were times today where we thought we had their guys under pressure but we didn’t make anything of it.
“We still have to be better.
“I put down indiscipline sometimes to mistakes. Maybe our guys have really got to learn that Test match rugby is about pressure. When you make mistakes they’ll kill you. They made mistakes today but we didn’t take advantage and that’s the difference in the game.
“But you’re not helping yourself obviously when you have 14 men for half the game.”
However, the England team manager believes his young squad are on a steep learning curve and will be better for the experiences of the last three weeks.
“I think they’re learning the lessons,” he said.
“At times we made them look average but then it tells in the last 20 minutes – fitness. I think a lot of our guys are playing a Test match series for the first time, and it shows.
“We know we’ve got lots of guys that can play at this level, but we’ve still got areas where we need to impove as a team, things like composure, the intangibles.
“There were times today where we needed to get take a grip on the game and slow it down and we didn’t do that and paid for it.”
