Didn't you know, that was Sinfield and McGuire's fault.

I quite like your lineup, I'd be tempted to use morley as the impact, rather than Graham, who I think is more of a solid durable prop.

I'd still have sinfield at 13, but give him license to get into dummy half as much as Roby

England need to get the ball into the hands of their most dangerous individuals as often as possible, which to me means that if you are going to play Eastmond, it's in the halves.

As the least successful of the half-backs on Saturday, that's at the expense of McGuire IMO.

Assuming Inu replaces Matai, the Kiwis won't lose anything in attack but they will be slightly weaker in defence I reckon, so I'd be looking to get the likes of Ellis and Burgess running at them on the edges, targetting Hohaiha and Fien.

So I'd go something like:

Briscoe S, Briscoe T, Smith, Shenton, Hall, Tompkins, Eastmond, Morley, Sinfield, Graham, Ellis, Westwood, Burgess

Roby, Crabtree, Carvell, Wilkin

I have been in a meeting this morning, and I was asked why a spreadsheet I created was 'playing up' ?

I answered 'Probably McGuire's fault' which, judging on the blank expressions went 'Woooooossssshh'.

How stupid.

The problems with your spreadsheet were nothing to do with McGuire. It was all Lee Smiths' fault.

last night, whilst having a tender moment with my mistress, I suffered erectile dysfunction. When she asked what the problem was I laid the blame squarely on Danny McGuire's poor defensive positioning.

your living in a fantasy alnd if you think the GB captain will be dropped, or that Carvell is going to be any better, no matter how 'shot' you think he is

I don't think he is suggesting that is what will happen, just that is what he would do.

I was actually proud of the England performance. There's no time in my memory that we have turned around a game like that against the Aussies. We've beaten them and played well against them before, but I've never seen them go behind like that and then actually dominate a half. 10 minutes, maybe 20 on top, but not the full half, and certainly not nilling the opposition (especially a team touted as one of the best ever Aussie sides). A bit of luck like the Aussies had in the first half and we could have had that game.

But fleeting glances at the VT and some of the offerings from visitors here would make you think it was a total humiliation for England. Not so. No need for wholesale changes to the team.
Sean Briscoe actually showed up well in the second half - suprising what you can do when you don't have to run the ball back from the bottom corner of the pitch continuously. I'd either move Smith to the wing or give Fox a try - he has more game time than Tom Briscoe this year and looks to have more pace which might be needed in defence.
Other than that I'd leave alone the team, just change JP's defensive role back to prop and have Burgess start defending on the right (or maybe even move Ellis out there).
I'd keep McGuire. He can't play that badly again, and he's still the best 6 in the SL and I don't think he goes well off the bench - he needs the full 80. Eastmond off the bench again.

Tony Smith has to show he can get two good halves of rugby out of England rather than just one. If he can do that, we can win this.

I think we should open the GB team up to some sort of text voting. Every week the general public get to decide the starting lineup.

Have Dermott O'Leary announcing live on Sky Sports.

"Roby, you're still Hooker. Danny, you could still be Stand Off. Sykes, your not good enough to be even in this squad, so I'm wasting my breath here"

With the RFL I wouldn't put it past them. Would be great publicity though

Isn't that pretty much how they did it back in the day? I remember a selection "committe" for the GB team that faced Australia in '82. After the first test only the Jeffasuarus and Des Drummond played the second test. Now that's a selection policy that would not be out of place on the VT.

On a related note is the gap now as wide as it was in 1982?

didn't the old touring parties have someone from each club?

some strange blackpool representatives in the 80s mentioned in ian hadfields book i'm sure.

And no i don't think it's as wide as 82 , the invincibles were the best i've ever seen.

was it comparable to when wigan were 100% pro & everyone else was part time though?

Indeed - I realise criticising JPs performances on here are akin to slitting the throat of a sacred cow though, so I did half expect a knee jerk from someone in response.

knee jerk or not, I was mainly questioning whether you think that Peacock offers less to GB than Carvell. I guess I know your answer.

Roby at loose forward???? That must be a joke.

There's only one way to find out.

I wasn't entirely convinced before Saturday that Crabtree would offer more to England than Peacock, but I got an answer.

JP needs to play at prop - I suspect his selection at SR was a contributing factor to Englands defensive woes last week.

However, do you really believe England would be better off with Carvell?

I also think Eastmond at half with another inexperienced halfback would be a huge gamble when he's not managed to have any sort of a run at club level in the halves.

Ive rated Crabtree as being capable to perform on the bigger stage. he has good strength, mobility, and is able to get the ball away in the tackle.

I'm never that convinced by Carvell.

Who looked the more dangerous of the two halfbacks on Saturday?

England need to be prepared to take chances, otherwise they'll just end up picking the same old tried - and failed - faces.

In the absence of Burrow, Eastmond offers the best option IMO to cause the big Kiwi forwards problems with his footwork and acceleration. I reckon he's well on the way to becoming the halfback that Jason Robinson could have been had other aspects of his game not let him down.

Aye a pity about those weaknesses, what a player that Robinson could have been.

If he'd had even a relatively decent passing and kicking game to match his reading of the game and his physical attributes, he could have been the best half-back GB have ever produced, and I include the likes of Murphy and Millward in there.

I don't think it's the same, no. We not were able to dominate any of the games I remember for any period of time. We only scored one try in three matches. Even Sheens admitted that at the end of the game on Saturday they were exhausted - they didn't break sweat in '82. Having said that I remember GB being able to hold Australia in check until the second half most games in '82, but wether that was due to the conditions of playing in English mud in November, the inclusion of "biff" for long periods, or the fact we had better players? I don't know.

We did have a larger pool of players to choose from because of the international ban, but we had completely lost contact with the sport in Australia - no coaches, no players over here and no idea of how they had progressed (although I believe in '79 the warning bells were ringing loud and clear).

I was looking at the GB teams for those three games and we played 3 completely different sets of half backs, Nash and Woods, Holmes and Ken Kelly, Topliss and Gregory. Three different 9's, three different 13's, 5 different second row forwards. The pack for the third test was completly different to a man from the one in the second test.

We are - by and large - more competitive at home than we were in 1982. Wasn't it 2003 when all three Tests went down to the last five minutes with just one score between the sides?

Perhaps some of this is because of the curtailing of full tours, meaning visiting Australian sides aren't getting the chance to bed in and build up match sharpness/combinations as they would on a long tour with club games leading up to the Tests.

Conversely, that end to proper tours has made GB/England much less competitive away from home as was evidenced by performances on Australian soil over the last 10 years when compared to tours in the late 80s and 90s.

In 1982 and 1986 GB didn't look like winning any of the Tests. At least now there is the belief that with the right performance the Australians are eminently beatable on their travels.

We were in a mess back then weren't we.



I was going to make that point (or something similar) with regards to the '82 series as my over-riding memory from a British point of view.

Strength (weakness) in depth. The selection committee actually had several options back then because of the overseas ban.