Too busy flirting with Nobby, their an awful combo when you add Nobbys usual stupid sayings.

And here comes the 'Nightingale' train





One of the things Dave Woods said sums up why I feel whole mentality in England is wrong when it comes to sport. He said something along the lines of 'Its no surprise England are behind to a team of this class'.

Why is it a surprise? NZ were there for the taking and we could of beat them. If we had the right/better coaches, executed the right plays at the time right times, we could have beat them today. Most of the time we seem to go into the game believing we have already lost and all we need to show is that we have given it a 'good try' for people to be happy.

M better result than I had feared at times in the first half. I kept calling for England to play more expansive and when they did they looked much better, as they usually do. This whole our strength is in the forwards is a bit of a myth, we arent really any stronger there than NZ or Australia, and when we play up the middle Bradford style it is so predictable. We look at our best offloading and playing wider and we actually make the oppositions defence work.

We're just not quite good enough. We did OK, and could have played better. We need more players playing at the NRL intensity each week. I love the spectacle of super league, but as these games always show we lag behind the southern hemisphere.

We are capable of springing the odd upset, but the better sides are Aus and NZ.

Went pretty much as expected, really - in fact the bookies got it spot on. Too many of our players just aren't international class.

It's a pity we haven't any half backs, we did look a lot better when Atkins went off and Sam went to fullback.

Do players / coacher learn.

Last week I commented on Luke Robinson defending and letting players get on his outside and then not staying with them.
Exactly the same thing happened today.

The first half was poor with only Tomkins and O'Loughlin looking capable of making a break. Add to that the poor ball handling of Fielden, Roby, Burgess etc, it made a difficult job almost impossible.

I've always liked Kevin Brown, but he looks out of his depth.
O'Loughlin to stand off next week.

I also thought Joel Tomkins was very quiet and will be fortunate to keep his place.

England had 33 missed tackles, NZ 18.
If a team came to Wigan, Saints or Leeds and had 33 missed tackle they'd lose by over 30 and have over 40 put past them.
NZ made countless yards with England only having two tacklers. MM has three for every play down the middle and teams have difficulty getting over the half way line.
Can't complain, although Tony Archer is dreadful the loss wasn't down to him.
Our players overall aren't good enough, halves have no pace and the coaching leaves a lot to be desired.
I thought that at 18-0 the game was won, the Kiwis also thought that and got slack in their defence.
As far as England/GB are concerned it's same as, same as.

Agree with evrything you say but think youre being a little harsh on Joel he came on late in the game and didnt have a chance to really do much. I thought when he was on he was one of the only England players winning the collision and making yards.

Doesn't get enough of a chance really. Comes on later in the game, granted he got completely dominated in 1 set when the kiwi's were putting a push on everyone, but his quick hands allowed us to score a try.

Put himself about, i'd like to see him get a bit more gametime though.

Joel will keep his place because he didnt really fook anything up which puts him in front of a few straight away

Why didn't Sam Tomkins play?

Apart from 10-15 minutes against 16 men where we showed a bit of go forward and desire, we looked flat and poor across the board

Kiwis weren't awesome by any stretch. However, I can't think of a single aspect of the game where they didn't perform slightly better than us. That added up to quite a big gap. They also had Marshall; had he played for us we might have nicked it.

Same old Stevie Macca producing another lesson in how not to coach a team.

Sam, are biggest threat from the backs is totally wasted as a 1st receiver. Took Macca 55 mins (+80mins from the last game to realise this). Sam moves to fb (as Eng like Wigan play split halves) and Sam looks deadly attacking further out wide, no wonder we get ourselves back into the game.

But due to no foresight from Macca he's then to put Widdup in the centres, a position he's never played before against an international test centre. What a bag of baby poo.

Reeks of how he had Platt, Halley and Sykes all playing in different positions during the game to course an almighty mess.

Did Widdop not go to centre due to an inury to Atkins?

I dont know if we are spoiled at wigan but the dummy runners were key to confusing the defenses this year i dont think England did it at all

The other thing we learned was why widdop is not even an nrl player yet, but eben he made more impact than atkins did when he went to centre

Too many mistakes though in the 1st half, 2nd was better though, if only brown had not pushed him (no need to he had already gone past the ball anyway)

Once again the teams from down under are just a different class. It's so ing depressing.

Oh and no thank you to Widdop. He's awful.

Maybe it's just me but I certainly didn't feel NZ were light years ahead of us. As per usual it was the basics of the game where we let ourselves down, that coupled with two defensively inept centre's. Team selection could have been better but with so many out I'll cut McNamarra some slack.

My major gripe would be with the style of rugby we play, were far better playing off the cuff stuff as opposed to just putting our heads down and taking them on down the middle.

That's the problem with having only one playmaker - too easy to shut down.

Terrible first half never got into the game

fielden giving away silly penalties and knocking on if first half (crabtree in for him next week)

goulding no where to be seen for first try

atkins was poor and widdop not good enough

credit for the second half fight back though

Goulding made the previous tackle on Pritchard and was at marker

First of all well done to Goulding i thought he had a brilliant debut and if that Shenton could defend and knew how to pass to his winger he would be a world class player because he has everything else.

I dont think Widdop was poor as everyones making out he dropped one ball from what i can remember, everyones been saying he is all set for the halves for Melbourne next year so why not just swap him and Sam Tomkins around?

1. Sam
2. Gouling
3. Shenton
4. Atkins/Cudjoe
5. Briscoe
6. Brown
7. Widdop
8. Fielden
9. Roby
10. Graham
11. Ellis
12. Burgess
13. O'Loughlin

14. Robinson
15. Westwood
16. Joel
17. Crabtree

So basically your saying he's quick....

still had a poor game and was singled out by nz... weak link.

but not the only one, widdop was not upto it either

westwood,graham, ellis, robinson, s tompkins, shenton all showed up well

Did he balls have a poor game he brought the ball out well from dummy half and if shenton had realised that he had a winger to pass to he might have done more

You were watching a different game to the rest of us! Although really it's because you thought Cudjoe should have been picked instead. Goulding had a good game, as did Briscoe on the other wing. Very good work rate from both of them.