Harlequins Danny Care says England can be proud of their performance against New Zealand despite coming agonisingly close to toppling the current World Champions at a rain drenched Twickenham last Saturday.

The hosts were denied which could well have been a match-winning try by flanker Sam Underhill four minutes from time but was controversially ruled out after television replays showed that Courtney Lawes was judged to be narrowly offside.

Tries from Chris Ashton and co-captain Dylan Hartley saw The Red & Whites storm into a stunning 15-0 lead after 25 minutes before the mighty All Blacks rallied together and claimed a dramatic 16-15 victory.

But scrum half Care believes his fellow England colleagues can go into this Saturday's showdown with the ever improving Japan in a positive manner.

"Obviously we're very disappointed that we didn't get the win but we can be proud of the effort and in another game we could have beaten the best team in the world," said the 31-year-old who also had his fellow Harlequins colleagues Kyle Sinckler in the line up. "Disappointed but there is a lot of positives that we can take into next week."

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England head coach Eddie Jones mentioned during his post-match comments that despite the loss the result itself was a great step forward. Care also agreed.

"We lost by a point in the game and at the end we've could have easily won," Care added. "Against the best team in the world we ran them very close. Maybe we should have won the game and on another day we could have done but we learn the lessons and we move on."

England continue their Quilter Autumn Internationals campaign against 2019 Rugby World Cup hosts Japan this Saturday at Twickenham. Tickets are available by logging on to https://www.eticketing.co.uk/rfu/Events/Index, otherwise catch all the action on Sky Sports Action and Sky Sports Main Event from 2pm.