Borthwick said the call was “not one to dwell upon now” as it may “take away from what was an excellent Test match”, while New Zealand head coach Scott Robertson said: “When you slowed it down, it got pretty clear. Most things slowed down in rugby become clear.”
Speaking on the Rugby Union Daily podcast, ex-England fly-half Paul Grayson said: “There’s so much subtlety in amongst what seems like chaos at times in the breakdown.
“The game is a game of interpretation and sometimes it’s about who can infringe better. There was a bit of that from both teams in the way they approached the breakdown.”
He continued: “I thought the penalty at the end was a penalty. When you get backs involved in mauls, there’s always something likely to go wrong and Ollie Lawrence can see the line, he breaks away – in old money it was truck-and-trailer, so obstruction.
“I have no issues with the refereeing today and if you’re asking referees and assistants to find those tiny little details, you can’t complain when something as obvious as that goes against you.
“It’s just a shame that if they’d managed to get that score, kicked the goal and then had 30 seconds of madness to try to win it, it would have been some finish.”
