England’s house of straw will be reassembled in the vain hope that they can reach the World Cup final here in Australia, but after one puff blew it down in Newcastle, New South Wales, on Saturday, who is this mentally fractured team deluding? Themselves, perhaps. Certainly not their 6,000 followers, some of whom turned on them after a 24-8 lead against New Zealand was lamentably tossed away.

The odd beer can whistled past the ears of players. Usually a coach fond of extracting positives from even the bleakest performances, Tony Smith was seething on a grim night after the 36-24 defeat. England were coasting and inexplicably fell apart. As bad as the previous 52-4 hammering was by Australia, this defeat was a worse indictment of the squad’s fragile state, if that were possible.

Anger was not fully the reaction of fans, who had turned out in remarkable force; it was fury, shame and embarrassment. Entering the England dressing-room felt like intruding on a scene of grief. Even the children invited in for autographs seemed sceptical when faced with crestfallen players.

If the difference between the teams was encapsulated by the haplessness in defence of Paul Sykes, whose error-prone nature for Bradford Bulls all season surely cannot have escaped Smith’s notice, and Manu Vatuvei, the hulking New Zealand wing, scoring three of his four tries without a finger laid on him, the match crucially turned on two injuries.

Rob Burrow had just danced his way through for his second try, and England’s fourth, when the match was held up by a neck injury to Steve Matai, the New Zealand centre, who should be fit for Saturday’s semi-final rematch in Brisbane. In those ten minutes, the seeds of doubt were sewn, exacerbated by Paul Wellens being denied a try that would have given England arguably an unassailable advantage and injuring the full back’s right ankle in the process.

It signalled an end to England’s scoring. A simple move out wide for a try by Jason Nightingale further illustrated the brittleness on the edges of the England defence, Wellens hobbled off and the team descended into chaos. A reshuffled back line fell apart and if Sykes was culpable for Vatuvei’s second and third tries in disappearing without trace, the entire team were to blame as Nathan Fien scored a scrambled try and Vatuvei casually added his fourth.

England know what they have to do to win: continue where they left off for all bar five minutes of the first half, during which Mick Higham, Burrow and Martin Gleeson impressively plundered scores, and stick to the script.

“We’ve got to take what we do in Super League and make it work here,” Jamie Peacock, the captain, said. A waste of talent is in danger of summarising the team’s World Cup, in contrast to Ireland, who can qualify for Sunday’s semi-final against Australia in today’s match against Fiji. That Papua New Guinea had to beat Australia yesterday by three points to eliminate England underlined their plight. The Kangaroos obliged by winning 46-6.

Scorers: New Zealand: Tries: Vatuvei 4, Hohaia, Nightingale, Fien. Goals: Matai, Luke 3. England: Tries: Higham, Burrow 2, Gleeson. Goals: Purdham 4.

England P Wellens; M Calderwood, P Sykes, K Senior, L Smith; M Gleeson, R Burrow; A Morley, M Higham, J Peacock, J Jones-Buchanan, G Ellis, R Purdham. Interchange: K Sinfield, L Westwood, G Hock, J Langley.

New Zealand L Hohaia; J Nightingale, S Matai, J Ropati, M Vatuvei; B Marshall, T Leuluai; A Blair, N Fien, E Tuimavave, S Mannering, D Fa’alogo, J Smith. Interchange: I Luke, G Eastwood, D Kidwell, B Harrison.

Referee: T Archer (Australia).