Great win for England, but the best moment of all was seeing Fran Cotton running with the ball, selling 2 dummies and to cap it all, kicking ahead!

God bless the memory of Andy Ripley! A true giant and gentleman of the game! This Welshman honours Mr Ripley!

John Pullin died recently - RIP to an England legend (although sadly he's an obscure figure these days, as are most England players from before the Carling era).

Love Fran Cotton’s dummies at the end. Absolute classic.

I honestly jumped for joy when I saw this win by England at Eden park, what a brilliant match and a brilliant All black side, I miss how the players used to play before the Carlin era

Great win and especially enjoyed watching Jan Webster in his prime..

Fran Cotton, 2 brilliant dummies and a kick ahead, magic. He did an after dinner speech at our school in the mid 70s, one big fella.

At the end of the game, in the dressing room every England player walked up to Jan Webster and shook his hand. He was simply outstanding that day.

Oh for the days of short shorts, self-set 'let's get on with it' scrums, no lifting at line outs and goodness: wingers throwing in !!!! Happy days, eh!!

That was a pretty decent England team. They'd beaten South Africa the year before, and supplied some fine players to the 1971 and 1974 Lions. They went into this game as underdogs because they lost all the provincial matches. But this was the game they wanted. The AB teams of this era had good form out wide but were generally very loose and unpredictable. Lendrum was a good stalwart for Counties throughout the 70's but this game was not his finest moment. This was the first test I watched live on TV as a kid.

England had some big guys up front even in those days eg Cotton, Ripley etc

My late welsh mate went to this game, predicted the England win and nearly got wacked by everyone around him at the end.

England have always had the physique to match anybody.

I think England actually beat the Boks 1972 in SA. This result against the ABs was a real upset considering England lost all their 3 warm matches against NZ provincial teams and the ABs were expected to win comfortably. Halfback Webster outplayed Sid Going and the England pack with Cotton, Ralston and Ripley got the better over the AB's pack.

It's amazing how the opposing scrums just slammed into each other back then. Those guys in the front row absorbed a large number of hard impacts, not unlike a car crash.

Claude Brian 'Stack' Stevens, of Penzance-Newlyn. Great character.

England could have been great in this era but selectors were dreadful .They beat New Zealand and South Africa away. Not even the great Welsh team did that .

They played hard to win those matches. That's all. Australia was woeful back in the 70s. I think this is one of the biggest upset in rugger history. 1973 was a year of upsets. lol

Wasn't Squires' try a knock-on?

Thank-you! Great rugby!

One pretty blatant AB stamp on an English player's head in the second half went unpunished - players just got on with it, no arm waving or histrionics!

England had been due to tour Argentina but the tour was called off because of terrorist threats.The vist to New Zealand was hurriedly arranged in its place!

Very generous comments by both captains. Well done.

Note to current scrum halves: how to feed a ball in straight into a scrum.

Yeah. This was England first ever win in New Zealand. They took out the Wallabies, Springboks, and All Blacks. They took out South Africa in 1972 then the All Blacks and last the Wallabies. The Wallabies lost to Tonga in Brisbane in the same year this game occurred. This is from NZTV and I'm sure England rugger fans read the newspapers the next day after this at home.

God how thing's have changed. David Duckham was a genius though ....apart from always getting injured.

I'm pretty sure half the All Blacks were hungover. Diabolical performance.

if you look at the scrums in this video, in some engagements, the props are prebound, thats what the IRB hope to introduce with this new crouch bind scrum, where they will do exactly that, bind on before they engage

I also like the fact that back then there was actual dispute of the ball by the hookers, so it made sense to have a scrum as a means of trying to regain possession. Today is kind of predictable who gets the ball.

Super match ! D'autres victoires contre les black ont elles suivie celle là ?

Scrums are so quick. Even when resetting the players are often staying bound. Intriguing to see when the mark is called for a catch in the 22 the attacking player positions himself on the mark & the attacker steps back to make the kick.

Yes!

Whatever happened to Tony Neary , he seemed to have scored a few those days

Great to watch. Scrums were so quick and evenly contested. Don’t get caught the wrong side of the ball or you’ll get raked, stamped on and kicked. Required both sides to want to play non stop. So much better without VAR type replays. Get on with the game!

Une rare et belle victoire des "rosbeefs" au pays des Blacks avec une belle équipe anglaise sous le commandement du vaillant et regretté talonneur John PULLIN

A cette époque, la différence n'était pas énorme (comme aujourd'hui). Le niveau de jeu est exceptionnel. J'ai aussi revu le match des black contre les français de 1973. Les français étaient très forts.

A team win a test match in this period in New Zealand refereed by a New Zealander. Thank god for refs in the professional era

they had to herd the dinosaurs away from the stadium for this match ...

Great game. Bet the next Eng side had very few of those in it. Selection was amazing. Jan Webster's only problem was that he wasn't Welsh. Made all tties despite being tripped up for the last one.

and the amateur era scrums takes around like less than 10 seconds to set up. If you watch rugger today, you will find today's scrums very boring to watch because it takes long to set them up and too many collapses. Crouch, touch, set, collapse. Crouch, touch, set, collapse.

Everyone has always said that Colin Farrell was the worst full back ever, he had nothing on Bob Lending!

The ref was an ex All Black!

Wouldn't it be great to go back to how the scrums were, not the crap of today.

In the buildup to this international, England beat Fiji by only one point and lost all three matches against New Zealand provincial teams but completed the tour with their first win against New Zealand since 1936. They had a number of all-time greats and were a far better side than their results against provincial opposition indicated. This tour was arranged after a scheduled visit to Argentina was cancelled because of terrorist threats against the players. Beat Fiji 13-12, lost to Taranaki 3-6, lost to Wellington 16-25, lost to Canterbury 12-19, beat NZ 16-10.

Who were the English locks in this game?

Thanks for putting the result in your heading! No point in watching it now!!!

That's when NZ and their famous haka used to be feared.

is this really the best quality of image from 1973? blobs of fuzzy black and white almost unwatchable.

Players like Bruce Robertson, Joe Karam and Bob Burgess, missing from the backline ,was a telling blow. Scrappy unorganized performance.Joe Karam was the most organized All Black of the 1970's. The only decent goal kicker we had during that entire decade. 90% Strike rate. Karam would have made a huge difference in this test and the 1976 South African test series. Once again the NZ Rugby Union blew a great opportunity.

Suspicion of a knock-on by England at 19:51! Can understand the referee missing it but not the commentators after watching the replay. Oh well, not complaining!

so nobody is going to talk about that huge knock on for englands first try?

What a couple of years for England that was! On a funnier note, anyone who complains about the standard of refereeing these days need to watch these old clips.. hilarious some of the missed calls back in the day, including two knock ons just before England tries 😂😂

You see how quickly they set up the scrums here in this match to keep the game flowing. IRB needs to look at the amateur era and see how scrums were set up quickly. The forwards here know where they supposed to be and they set up very quickly and put the scrum straight in. Collapse were a minimal back then compared to today. Today's scrums has a heck lot of collapses and killing the flow of the game. Today's scrums takes 1 minute to set up.