'Not good enough': Rugby League World Cup semi-final reaction after England crash out

The home side were beaten by an 83rd minute golden-point drop goal, after the sides were locked up 26-26 at the end of normal time.

It was an epic tie - in terms of drama if not quality - and Wane accepted England fell short after a near-perfect opening four weeks of the tournament.

They had crushed Samoa 60-6 in the first match, but Wane conceded: “I can’t fault my players’ effort, they tried hard and they are absolutely devastated as is every member of staff.

“To make any excuses would be unfair to Samoa, they were definitely the better side. We weren’t good enough. I knew it would be a different challenge from Samoa, they have too many good players and they proved that.”

Wane reflected: “A lot of credit to our players for what they’ve done in this tournament, they have been outstanding with what they have delivered, but we’ve not done the small details today and it has cost us dearly.

“They had better composure, they were the best team. I am going to look at what I’ve done this week, it just wasn’t good enough today on the biggest stage you can imagine.

“We needed a bit more composure and to do things that work for us more consistently. We went away from that a bit and that’s down to me and the staff.

“The first people we’ll look at is ourselves. We’ve got an honest group of players, we’ll be in this position again and we’ll be better next time.”

Stephen Crichton’s winning drop goal came after a forward pass by England captain Sam Tomkins. Wane conceded: “[That was a] poor effort, not good enough - we have to be better.”

Tomkins felt straight after the game was too early to dissect what went wrong after such a promising campaign.

He said: “There was a lot of effort, but it was an example of effort alone not being enough. We will get into the reasons why another day.”