He came close to the Aussie line twice

His defence was solid throughout

The penalty for the late hit on the kicker was a joke decision

His knock on from Thurston's kick was a tricky one that many would not catch and would've lead to a catch had he not gone for it.

yeah absolutely disgusting that Watkins couldn't be arised to get himself in position to stop Matt Scott and trent Merrin barging over...then he had the cheek not to assist Percival when trying to stop cronk walking through for another easy try... bloody Watkins if it wasn't for him we would be in the final!

edited

Not another pointless thread?

In a game where our "NRL Superstars" have been humped without any lube & "Uber Coach" has been shown up we get a thread about Watkins

He looked threating at times, and went looking for work. He defended OK overall, but tried to force it a few times which led to mistakes.
On the other side Percival showed some glimpses, but is way off the mark physically, and in terms of his decision making, he probably wouldn't have been in if we had a better options, but I'm sure he'll get better.

The NRL based players were the most disappointing for me, apart from Graham, perhaps. The Burgess twins were especially shocking, Whitehead doesn't seems to do anything apart from pop up with the occasional try, Hodgson was poor today, and Widdop was beyond mediocre.

Watkins was solid throughout in defence today and thought he kept inglis quite quit, in attack he had little ball but looked dangerous when he did have it skipped past inglis a couple of times, but that second half effort from most of the squad was poor we just couldn't cope at times.

don't you know he was the agreed scapegoat before a ball had been kicked. i for one am sick of average players getting picked because they play in NRl

England would've won had Ryan Atkins played instead.....no honestly.

Bennett will pick a load of Aussies for the WC next year. won't make any difference and we will become an even bigger laughing stock for using their cast offs.

Should get rid of Bennett now. Scotland showed you can get a result with the right attitude. Wane or for all his criticisms McDermott would be better than the half a**ed Bennett

Am I the only one with the feeling that the professional game is withering on the vine over here. Or can anyone see us putting in a decent shift in the next world cup? It just seems to be a continuing cycle of hope and expectation dashed as soon as we come up against Aus and NZ

yes, i think Wane is a good shout, said that before his style is tailor made for the international scene imo. Bennett was a bad appointment, and if he rips the whole team apart like i expect for his shot at the WC next year all the good work McNamara did in getting us close to the big two will have been for nothing.

Didn't think Watkins was too bad today. Kept Inglis pretty quiet when they went head to head and looked dangerous with the ball. Don't know what people want/expect.

Defensive kallums been sound. Thoughout the whole 4 nations he's hardly been given any ball. Bennetts tactics were clearly to go through the middle which I think is boring and unaffective. You can't blame kallum for not imposing himself in attack when he hardly sees any ball and when he does it's poor.

It wasn't Watkins who failed to find touch from penalties twice.
It wasn't his fault that Hicks was conned into giving a penalty kick for his supposed late tackle on Cronk.

Does stealing a living ring any bells to you,even if Beaumont is paying you minimum wage?





Incorrect I rate him very highly and I also live 15 miles from Leeds
I'm not sure he would be good enough to get into the Leigh side though

Could be wrong, but I thought the pen was because Kallum hit Cronks standing leg, rather than for being late, which is a penalty.

Both legs are in the air and he hits him on the hip a split second after the ball went. Awful call that wouldn't have been given had Inglis done that to Brown.

Appologies if I am missing something here and going slightly off thread

Why do you all think MarioRugby has anything at all to do with Leigh??

Looking back through his posts, he has mentioned Warrington as "us" & Salford as "my club" or similar

So where do you get his link with Leigh?

For whats its worth I thought Kallum played as well as he was allowed to play (Aussies and his team mates)

Wane as England coach would be laughable. As were Wigan's last two WCC "efforts" under his charge, the last of which saw two reserve grade halfbacks tear his side a new one.

Whether Bennett can make England better is debatable. But we've absolutely zero chance if we keep making schoolboy errors and fail to defend forwards barging at the line. We have to make Australia pause for thought. They are incredibly smooth when they are on top, but NZ has shown that if you stay with them they can be beaten. The problem is England over the past 20 years have rarely even made Australia sweat.

Wasn't one a 14-12 extra time loss? Hardly laughable.

A kicking game beyond schoolboy level is an essential part of that. We need to find one from somewhere. Seldom seen a worse 40 minutes of "tactical" kicking than the first half from England yesterday.

Agreed. What is with these bombs that players keep putting up (yes i'm talking about you Mr Brown) which are from your own half, apply zero pressure and are like shelling peas for the opposition winger...what happened to the deep kick across the floor and trying to turn the back three around, we didn't do it once yesterday in that first half and most of the time the Aussies were starting the set from half way. Simply won't cut it at that level.

Just to add, Sam Burgess kicking on the last and failing to find touch with 2 penalties..WTF??

No aberration, it's a skill performed shockingly at club level. I'd be surprised if I kicked a ball more than 3 times when I played but on the surface it'd seem to be something that players could work and work and work at, particularly with regard to weighting a short kick while on the move. Yet how many times do we see kicks go dead, not by a matter of inches but where you know it's long from the second it leaves the boot?