Yes, but a good defensive centre can carry a weaker half-back in the line - look at how the Saints centres hide Long, or the Leeds centres hide McGuire. The problem comes when there is no defensive centre at all, as was the case on Saturday. McGuire was so badly exposed because he had Smith, not Senior, outside him. Eastmond would also have been exposed at half-back had he played, if Smith was at centre.

The point I'm making is not that Eastmond is a much better defender than McGuire - he's not.

I do think however that he offers more at the moment in attack than McGuire on current form, so he should play in the halves, not the centres.

England's key problem, IMO, is not McGuire, or Smith or Briscoe, or Eastmond. It's that we have to find a strong, mobile, tackling centre for Saturday, or we're screwed.

Englands defensive problems in the first half would have been no different if they'd had Greg Inglis in the centres rather than opposite them. They were ones of structure, not of personnel. The defensive line was too compressed, meaning two or three drives to the right then long accurate shifts to the left created massive amounts of space for Inglis and Slater to exploit.

If Eastmond had been in the centres, he would have looked no better than Lee Smith did, irrespective of who his half back and winger around him were. England set up to challenge the Australians to go around them rather than through them, and it failed spectacularly.

Spot on. It's quite conceivable that a reasonably competent SL side would have scored several tries from the opportunities given to australia on saturday.

While I agree with this in principle, there was at least one instance of simple bad decision making... Sinfield jumping out of the line to take Thurston when he was covered on the inside leaving a hole

Good defence is having the right structure coupled with the people capable of putting it into practice

I'm not sure I agree with this. On a number of occasions when they broke for tries we had the right numbers of people out there, but they were standing in the wrong place, making the wrong choices or occasionally just missing tackles. That's not necessarily structure, that's about people knowing where to stand, and the most important guy in the three out there is the centre.



I do, however, agree with this. My whole concern throughout is that some people are painting Eastmond as the centre solution to the Smith problem. He's not.

5'6" v 6'5" - do the math.

Blimey, someone get on the phone to Ricky Bibey and replace get him a gig on the bench... Crabtree out!

Was Bibey considered an integral part of the side?

If you were to change the halfbacks, I'd go for Tomkins/Myler. The main reason I'd do that isn't because of how McGuire can play at his best - IMO at his best he's a better player than either of those two yet - but how badly McGuire can play at his worst under pressure. I'd rather see two cocky little gits who - regardless or perhaps because of their lack of experience - reckon they can do the business. Tomkins may have been a bit overawed at the start but wasn't at all by the end.

FWIW I suspect McGuire/Tomkins will stay. I agree with not starting Eastmond at centre. I'd leave him on the bench to come on and try to make an impact.

If you make a change at centre - which I think we should - I can only suggest Bridge or one of the more mobile forwards.