Defence coach Mike Ford was left "embarrassed" as England conceded four soft tries in their comprehensive 37-20 defeat by New Zealand in Auckland this morning.

New Zealand exploited defensive weaknesses in England's fly-half channel - Charlie Hodgson fell off a tackle on Ma'a Nonu for a try by Mils Muliaina - and Dan Carter scored a try from a set-piece attack.

"It is pretty embarrassing sitting here as defence coach having conceded the tries that we did," said Ford. "I don't think we got busted once in those areas during the Six Nations but tonight we were ripped apart.

"It is a bit of structure, a bit of one-on-one misses. It is definitely something we have to fix. The one thing we were pretty confident on was our set-piece defence and it was dreadful tonight."

England's tour manager Rob Andrew said: "Fundamentally, we made too many mistakes just before half-time and just after. We allowed the All Blacks too much easy possession and we allowed them too many easy points. For vast amounts of the game we were pretty competitive, ironically in the areas we thought New Zealand would challenge us.

"We are learning about players all the time. Test-match rugby is a brutal place and if you make simple mistakes you will be punished, no matter how much hard work you do in other areas. There is a lesson for all the players."

Hodgson was replaced after only 50 minutes and his place for next weekend's second Test in Christchurch must already be in doubt given the success Nonu had attacking his channel. "Clearly, if you look at the four tries that were scored, two of them came down that channel," said Andrew. "There are areas we need to work on in terms of when New Zealand have the ball."

Andrew was impressed by Topsy Ojo, who took both his tries on debut in expert fashion. He picked off Carter's offload for the first and then raced onto a kick from fellow debutant Danny Care for the second. "Both of them were exceptional opportunity tries. He still had a lot of work to do when he got ball but that is why he is here," said Andrew.

"He took his chances really well and played pretty well in his all-round game. There is a lot of disappointment in the dressing room but there are also a lot of positives over some of the aspects of the game we took to the New Zealanders."

All Blacks coach Graham Henry accused England of being passive in the scrum in a messy final quarter. Henry was impressed by prop Greg Somerville's performance against opposite Sheridan, in a scrum battle that had been pinpointed as a key area ahead of the game.

"I thought Somerville had a very good game and thought he dominated the contest. I thought the All Blacks scrum was better than the England scrum," Henry said. "It was just a pity it started to fall over at the end. It spoiled the game as a spectacle to some extent. It would have been good to see both sides trying to scrum and hopefully that will happen next week.

"There was passive scrummaging going on, which doesn't help the game. I think with a big pack like that you need to be very positive and scrum positively."

Overall, Henry described his side's performance as "pleasing" but felt there were plenty of areas they could build on ahead of next week's Test in Christchurch. "We're pretty pleased with the performance. The guys showed mental toughness after 20 minutes under the cosh," he said.

"Their forwards had control of the game and our guys hung in there. They played very well for the next 40 but the last 20 minutes were not as good as we'd hoped, a bit of ball was dropped and turned over. It's something to build on and the guys should be very satisfied with the way they played."