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After finally scaling Mount Everest with Tenzing Norgay on 29 May 1953 the first person Edmund Hillary encountered on his descent was his longtime climbing friend, George Lowe. “Well, George,” Hillary said, “we knocked the bastard off.” Which is basically how England’s captain, Maro Itoje, and his team felt on Saturday having lifted the Hillary Shield, named in honour of the indomitable New Zealander who conquered the world’s most famous summit.
English rugby’s ultimate Everest is still up ahead of them, of course, in the form of the 2027 World Cup, but this was their South Col moment. And while a first home win against the All Blacks since 2012 and their second‑highest margin of victory in this 120-year-old fixture will both be sources of satisfaction there was also a powerful sense that their upwardly mobile trek is far from complete.
We shall return in a moment to the dark flip side of that proposition – that New Zealand are edging dangerously close to the abyss of unprecedented mediocrity – and South Africa obviously still stand head and shoulders above everyone else. But listening to Itoje on Saturday night was to sense that all involved with England are genuinely excited to find out just how much higher they can go.
Their optimism is not simply fuelled by 10 wins on the spin, nor the coming of age of outstanding young prospects such as Guy Pepper, Henry Pollock and Immanuel Feyi-Waboso. Rather it is the depth of belief that England are beginning to build, their growing composure regardless of situation or opposition and the leadership example that is now revealing itself.
Take Itoje’s morning-of-the-game address to his squad. The hours before kick-off can be long and enervating but on Saturday the routine of poached eggs, porridge and protein shakes was not uppermost in the captain’s mind. Having tasted series victory with the British & Irish Lions in Australia less than four months earlier, he wanted to impress on the less experienced players just how much they should cherish the big days.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to be around England for a while and to have been around professional rugby for a while,” Itoje said. “But sometimes it can just feel like a job … a normal job where you’re just showing up for training and showing up to games. Because you do it so regularly, sometimes you have to take a step back and actually realise where you are.” So he urged them to think back to the fondest dreams they had as kids: of playing at a sold-out Twickenham, of facing the haka, of beating the mighty All Blacks.
And, lo, so it came to pass that Maro and his young dreamers’ dearest wishes were granted. At 12-0 down they could have wilted; instead George Ford’s rat-a-tat drop goals gave them a foothold back in the contest, the home scrum is becoming “a weapon” to quote Itoje again, and there are also encouraging signs that England are thinking smarter and operating with greater clarity.
There were numerous little snapshots but perhaps the best example arrived in the 54th minute. Clean lineout ball was not always England’s staple diet but this time Alex Mitchell sent a fizzing miss pass straight to Ollie Lawrence, thundering down the inside-centre channel. The most obvious option was for Lawrence to continue thundering straight down the train tracks into contact, which is what the All Black midfield were clearly expecting.
Instead, with a deftly flicked ball to his right, Lawrence found his centre partner Fraser Dingwall, wearing 12 but now deployed further out. If poetry in motion is a slight stretch, the unalloyed joy on Dingwall’s face as he arrowed through the gap to score would have warmed the stoniest English heart. Cunning variation, subtle subterfuge, inch-perfect execution … precisely the qualities, ironically, that were once New Zealand’s rugby hallmark.
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Look, maybe it’s too early to write off the Scott Robertson project but, goodness, the great “Razor” has his work cut out. On this blunt-edged evidence the All Blacks’ 43-10 implosion against South Africa in Wellington in September was no blip and all that “lost aura” chatter is justified. Did you know Australia Under-18s have thrashed NZ secondary schools twice inside the past two months, racking up a total of 130 points in the process? Let’s just say the old impregnable All Black edifice is crumbling to a point where it is going to take a mighty effort to rebuild it.
Which, ultimately, would be bad news for everyone, England included. The day the All Blacks fade to grey is the day rugby shrinks significantly in the global imagination, regardless of how good the Springboks and others continue to be. Perhaps the time really has come for New Zealand Rugby to ask themselves whether a South African-free Super Rugby Pacific competition is weakening their national team.
England, on the other hand, can now lift their eyes to the hills, with the World Cup draw scheduled for 3 December. Assuming they see off Argentina on Sunday, all is suddenly set fair, with the injured Ollie Chessum and Tommy Freeman among a number of extended squad members pushing for places in the 2026 Six Nations.
Their captain is already convinced there is much more to come and that England can successfully shatter some other glass ceilings between now and 2027. “We want to get better,” Itoje said. “When I think about the squad, where we are and our desire to grow as a team, I think we can.” English self-belief, in other words, is increasingly back. And as the late Sir Edmund Hillary once sagely observed: “It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.”
