I agree, however he only got to play 16 games because of that nasty hip injury. If he's up to scratch again, fully match fit, then put him in instead of Chase.

nasty????
I dislocated an elbow playing Gaelic Football and have an opinion on pain regarding child birth.....what happened to his hip was slightly more than "nasty".

Chase has been nothing other than "looking busy" so far.......the Kiwis will wind him up and he'll become a liability....

I'd be surprised if the skipper carried on after the WC anyway. If Steve Mac doesn't get a final app under his belt - I doubt he'll be retained but we'll see.

TBH we need a coach who gets his players fired up. You look at the players in the England Team not performing well, yet those same players run blood to water in leagues.

George and Sam Burgess have both been absolute machine in NRL. The Wigan, Leeds players for example the same.

Yet for England they can be pedestrian. That to me is down to McNamara.

He didnt fire his players up at Bulls, he hasnt for England.

Considering the potential, the England side has had a wasted few years imo.

I was looking forward to watching Widdop this World Cup. I believe he should be playing for England, and it's a shame that we might not see him again.

The jury is most definitely still out on Widdop. He has proven very little in his career, and that's not his fault. At the Storm, he has filled in at fullback and played a secondary role in the halves from 5/8. This World Cup was meant to be his first real go, so we thought. It looks like we'll now wait until next year when he will surely be a main man at St. George Illawarra.

Anyone holding Widdop in high regard today, I say, wait a little longer yet.

I'm sorry, have I slipped into some kind of alternative timeline where we have already been knocked out of this world cup? Why are we running a post mortem on a team that is about to play a semi final

I think a more interesting thread will be what will certain posters do if England do actually win the thing? Kevin Sinfield is a model professional, a nice guy, someone who has worked hard and made the best of his talent, he has had a hugely successful career and at all times represented himself, his club and his country with the utmost professionalism and dignity for 16 years. Yet he has all this vitriol and criticism aimed at him because he has captained his country to a world cup semi-final that we aren’t guaranteed to win.

Steve McNamara has taken on a poisoned chalice, a hiding to nothing, put up with years of whining and criticism, insults and people hilariously spelling his name wrong, all because he took on a job no-one else really wanted, worked hard and diligently and prepared the team as best as possible to try and win a world cup we are still involved in.

Some people have set themselves so far against the people who are working hard to try and win them a world cup that if we are successful they are going to look like utter morons. I just don’t get it. Why not just support the team? What precisely is all this negativity supposed to achieve?

I think sinfield has been solid in this tournament.

Two things spring to my mind
1 - if England are to win this tournament (or even reach the final), they will need the kicking game and game sense under pressure that sinfield can bring.
2 - sinfield deserves more respect (as a player, professional and person) than he gets from sections of the rl public.

I hope he has a blinder and shuts a few up - the main problem is outside sinfield in the 6 shirt in my opinion.

Can't argue with much of that, particularly Chase, who is an absolute waste of a shirt. Sinfield always comes across well in front of the cameras when interviewed and is clean and hardworking on the pitch. He has a stack of medals to show for his hard work and but for a brain fart at the millenium a few years back may have had the CC medal that should go with his collection (running the ball rather than equate the scores against Bradford with a highly kickable penalty).

My biggest gripe is playing Sinfield out of position. He isn't an international class 6, 7 or 9 and we have better choices for 13 (his most natural position) yet he is shoehorned into the role he currently adopts at the expense of better and more naturally gifted players who could give the big two problems taking the ball to the line or keep them guessing. Sinfield just isn't good enough in those areas at this level (admittedly not helped at all by the Maori next to him). Maybe he wouldn't have got the flak if McNamara hadn't picked Chase? Maybe McNamara should get the crap for his choices?

Welcome to RL Fans Forum. Misery Central!
Wait till you see the moaning if we win it!

"Papering over the cracks", "sadly keeping people in jobs" etc etc.

When have our players for England/GB been "more fired up"? They often looked pedestrian in the past pre-McNamara.

Average no of games played in 2013 prior to World Cup:
New Zealand players = 23 games
Australia players = 25 games
England (incl. NRL based players) = 27 games
England (not incl. NRL players) = 29 games

No. of players who've played 30+ games in 2013 prior to World Cup:
New Zealand = 0 (highest is Kieran Foran with 2icon_cool.gif
Australia = 2 (Darius Boyd & Michael Jennings both on 30)
England = 10 (Josh Charnley 34, Leroy Cudjoe/Ryan Hall/Chris Hill 33, Rob Burrow/Liam Farrell/Brett Ferres/Ben Westwood 32, Mike McIlorum 31, Tom Briscoe 30)

I reckon the cumulative effect of playing more games year on year has a bigger impact on tiredness/fatigue/lack of spark etc than whether 1 professional coach is slightly better than another at motivation. I doubt the players need much motivation playing against New Zealand or Australia. If anything I'd guess they need calming down.

Don't disagree with that in principle, but would still have liked to see Wane play a part in the coaching set-up for the run through walls mentality he instils in his players.

McNamara has done a great job over the past four years, i hope he gets some reward on Saturday, win or lose i'd keep him in charge.

As for Sinfield, after the World cup, we have to start building to the next one and i doubt Sinfield will be playing in that.

But there's no rush to move him out of the ETS, he can still play his part and if his form is still good next season, then i'd let him make his swan song in the Exiles game (if that's being played next season).

Ppl have bn saying this 4 yrs, apparently SL would become semi-pro if they played less matches. Many are on the boundary line now as you know; unless we can get away with an 8 team SL? Haha.

Ive said many times before, the amount of times players play is a problem, the amount of time clubs play isn’t.

Id have more games, more competitions, but have bigger squads and limit the amount of times an individual player can play. More games for clubs to earn money form, more players playing in a full time environment, more space for youngsters to get more game time, more tactics in picking squads for people to discuss.

Yep, I don't see why we can't have the England coach pick say a 40 man ETS at the start of the season and then limit those ETS members to a certain number of domestic games.
It's almost certainly going to be 12 team league next year so there will be 23 SL games, 5 Cup games and a max of 4 playoff games which equals 32 domestic games. I'd say limit the ETS members to a max of 24 domestic games not including playoffs. So the max they could play is 28 domestic games.

From 2003-2013 (prior to start of World Cup)
Kevin Sinfield - 369 games
Cameron Smith - 323 games

That's nearly 2 seasons extra for Sinfield in the same time period, it must have an effect. The gap would be a lot bigger had Smith not been involved in 30 State of Origin games in that period.

I would limit the appearances for all players rather than just an ETS squad.

The thing it would do as well would mean that coaches would need to rotate the squads, meaning more uncertainty in more games.

It would also improve the standing of the play-offs as this would be a period of the season where you could guarantee it was the best v the best.

Id go even further and if we could get Sky’s agreement bring in another cup competition. In 2 years time sky lose the champions league, there are 14 Tuesday/Wednesday even slots free from February to May for us to offer a new 7 round competition to fill. We could even get rid of any friendlies we play and start the season on Boxing day with this new competition having 4 rounds prior to the start of SL. Possibly including the French, maybe even including a Welsh, Irish, Scottish, Italian domestic select 17.

Even if this took the maximum number of games a player would play to 45. If they were limited to playing 28 (+play-offs), then there would be roughly 15 or so games a year they couldn’t. That’s 15 or so games experience for a youngster to play. It would also need skilful rotation from a coach, picking and choosing which games to rest which players for.

If you are a big team do you rotate some of your stars when playing against a lesser side or the topsides? If the lesser sides would they then target the bigger sides as possible wins instead of the lesser sides as now? If you have a big cup game and a big league game do you trust you youngsters? Go for your big names in both games with a short turn around and possibly having to leave them out of a game you may want them for later down the line?

If Sky could pay say £5m for it, we could give the winner £1m which will certainly keep all clubs interested, I think as well as being in the best interests of the players, it would be in the best interests of the league as well.

I don't remember Cooper Cronk or DCE ever having an impact off the bench. It is almost inpossible for a half back to have any impact.

I wouldn't be against Wane doing the job on a part time basis with McNamara moving in to some sort of rugby director role. I think a lot of the stuff implemented away from the field by McNamara has been good and him in a full time role continuing that would be good. Wane could then concentrate on picking the squads and getting the best out of the team in the field.

Like him or loathe him, Wane knows how to get a team running through brick walls. We've probably not got the best forwards on paper in the league but as a collective they're fearsome and the side is really well structured.

Whilst I agree with the limit on games played for players in principle, surely its obvious it wouldnt work.

Wigan, Leeds, Warrington etc are ok but your smaller clubs just cant afford to have large squads.

It wouldn't as the game is set up now you are right, it wouldn't

But the aim and point of it would be to increase income, then spend that on talent to narrow that gap

Yeah if we say got a massive sponsor and every club got a cash injection it would be good. It would make games a lot more interesting imo.

Just a shame. It all comes down to money which no one in the sport is rolling in at the moment.

Sorry but the only thing I can concentrate on is the thread title. Should be If England ARE defeated.

No, the grammar in the thread title is correct. In this usage England is a singular pronoun (representing a single entity, England RL, rather than the seventeen players that will take the field). As the pronoun is singular this requires use of the singular verb form 'is' rather than the group form 'are'.

With regard to the OP's question I think like others that Sinfield will probably retire from international RL regardless of how far England progress, in order to prolong his career at Leeds and that if he does not then he will probably be left out of future squads as Morley was. This will allow a new halfback pairing to be developed ahead of 2017, this will I expect be a UK based partnership (disappointing the Widdop fan club) as it will be nigh on impossible to build a side around a half back pairing if one or both of them is only available for selection at the end of the domestic seasons. Slotting in a couple of forwards or an outside back each autumn is much less disruptive than playing half the games with one pair running the play and the other half of the games with a different pairing at 6 and 7.

McNamara will probably be retained as coach (again regardless of how far we progress in this WC) as England have at the very least met expectations and got to the last four. They could still make the final (and could then win it) and if they do so will have exceeded many people's expectations. It would be churlish to sack a coach for doing at least as well as the majority expected him and his team to do. I only expect him to leave the job if he wants to leave to take another job.