Wilkinson accepts full blame for his poor kicking display

Wilkinson missed five consecutive penalties under the permanent roof of the Otago Stadium as England struggled to a 13-9 victory over Argentina.

The Pumas also had trouble with their goal-kicking, with Felipe Contepomi and Martin Rodriguez combining to miss a total of six penalties.

Four years ago, the International Rugby Board launched an investigation into the balls being used at the 2007 World Cup after comments were made over their performance.

Gilbert have introduced a new ball for this World Cup which England have used in home internationals since November 2010 and they have been training with it since June.

There had been concerns that the big screens at either end could be disruptive to goal-kickers – but Wilkinson refused to blame anything but himself.

“I’m not going to apportion any kind of blame other than that on myself,” said Wilkinson. “I was the one kicking the ball and when I hit them I felt I was hitting them very, very well. That made it hard for me to understand and correct what was going on.

“There were a couple out there I would have thought were not great kicks but the rest of them I was pretty happy with.

“I kept looking at what I was doing each time and I was happy with it. So in a way it’s quite difficult to compound it and move on to the next one.

“It’s the same for everyone, it’s a case of going back to the drawing board and looking at how we can get better.”

After missing his fifth penalty, Wilkinson sent his next to the corner and that provided England with the platform for Ben Youngs to score the decisive try.

“Some of the bigger shots out there it was worth saying to Mike (Tindall, the captain) ‘let’s put it in the corner’ then there were other times when he wanted me to have a shot and I said ‘let’s go for it’,” said Wilkinson. “As a kicker you don’t ever look at it and say ‘I can’t kick this’. You always feel you’ll get the next one.

“The disappointing thing for me was that I would have liked to have scored more points to help the guys out, for your country and your team. But the only way you let people down is if you let things get to you and it affects the rest of your game.

“If you’re missing kicks you can’t allow the rest to go out the window and become useless.”