i appreciate the entusiasm that some England supporters are showing but for me the game on Saturday was played at a different skill and intensity level. THe Aussies didnt play that well especially in attack but they will only get better as will NZ. The only chance we have is to play Tomkins and Eastmond at half back.

To be realistic England will not win another game and will be a Aus v NZ final with Australia winning by a big margin in the final.
Final Prediction
Aus 40 - 16 NZ

briscoe
briscoe
smith
ellis
hall
eastmond
tomkins
carvell
moore
morley
peacock
westwood
burgess
wilkin

roby
crabtree
graham
shenton/to rotate with ellis into back row to rest back row or wilkin in centres instead of ellis need size and tuffness

that would be my strongest team

Nice try but I don't think they'll let us have fourteen players on the pitch at once.

This weeks game could be alot closer than most think. I do know if Lockyer does what he did at the weekend, and turn the ball back inside far too much we may keep them to a low score, as the middle track is our strength. I do however think if he lets the likes of Inglis and Hodges have the ball we are well and truley shafted.

at last...............

Tomkins in, Creabtree/Burgess on bench, Peacock in 2nd row........

Might have half a chance





Roby 80 mins at Hooker might be asking a lot

i can see Eastmond spelling at Hooker with Roby

Possibly, IMO that wouldn't be a bad idea. Looking forward to seeing how young Tomkins does against the Roos, and how much of an impact Crabtree can have against a top quality side. If we can match them up front we might have a chance of still being in the game in the second half, and then anything can happen............























or they could just spank us 48-10

...they'll spread the ball out wide to score.

The players will know a win and they make the final! In my opinion a good leader should be able to inspire the players to perform tomorrow. Maybe not win but they should give the Aussies a test at least

im sure they will, if given the chance

I am also sure they will, but they did not adopt those tactics against NZ. The ball was consistantly turned back inside.

Spread watch it's England +16 and France +40.

France game could be an interesting one. They are back on home soil and the Kiwis got themselves up big-style for the Aussie game. The France game migth catch them a bit flat, because no team can defend like they did last week two weekends on the trot.

Having said that, it won't affect us. We need just one more win to get to the final, and so even if New Zealand lose, they would go through by beating us (assuming we lose against Aus).

Doesn't Ganson try this experiment every week?



It would take about 5 seasons before a rule change like this took effect. For the first few seasons it would just frustrate our current crop of players who are now conditioned to the ten.

france + 40 seems a bloody good bet to me. England were lucky to beat um last week.

Interesting points, and I see where you are coming from. Do you think maybe we are just a game in transition, in that we have now got ourselves to a point (domestically) where sides across the board can defend well, and it has all been about defence for a few years. I can remember the fives drives and kick debate was going on in Australia two or three years ago. Now we have got defences working (McGuire-Smith combo aside), we will now try looking at ways of working our way round the defences.

Another problem we seem to have is that we shove anyone big in the pack, whereas in Aus they let them stay where they are most effective. For instance, if Inglis was English, I wonder whether we would be looking at chucking him in the pack. The same with Meninga.

We are now producing a good crop of forwards. It was on the right fringe and the kicking that we lost the game, not the forwards. We just seem to be failing in the backs, although a few are starting to creep through, with Tomkins, Eastmond and Myler.

i dont know about a game in transition, were in danger of putting it back years. ticket prices going up, too many imports including us in that 12 havnt we, how do we expect young brits to come through also boring rugby, changing ko times and it makes sense why crowds are down.
which forwards are we producing, burgess and graham. sinfield, peacock, morley are bordering on retirement. weve got tomkins and eastmond whol have a go and run at the line but weve no get out as the backs are rubbish. weve done it with atkins stuck him in the centre and said here you go take it in like a prop.
as for the better defence debate i cant agree with that one, most teams often let 20 odd points per game in and still win.
the franchise system was brought in so our players could come through, all clubs are doing is signing who they can in the hope that they finish high enough to get another franchise and of course i want sucess at our club but we need a level playing field across the board with a fazing out of imports over the next 5 years, with no rule exceptions.

As said somewhere on here about bolstering the pack idea BUT did everybody else think Jamie Peacock once again played in his prop position rather than his designated 2nd row for the game.

He never once ran wide like in his Bradford days which makes him a wasted comodity for the game.

Thought Shenton looked out of his depth along with McGuire and also Lee Smiths positioning was very poor on his opposite number.

Easy to say but isn't that what theyv'e been training for all week?

Which forwards in England show signs of having the ability to have been backs instead.

G Ellis, as we know, could have been developed as a centre but he lacks the pace to be a real offensive threat. His defence would have been as it is right now.

Lee Gilmour could have been a possibility, I know he's played a lot of his rugby as a three-quarter but how much better would he have been if exclusively used as a centre?

Joe Westerman?
Ben Westwood?
Eorl Crabtree began his senior career as a centre.
Karl Pryce was a wasted opportunity to develop our own Vatuvai, Vainikolo type.

There are very few big, fast, athletic and classy players in the game in this country. We seem to be incapable of attracting them to our game if they exist at all. Do they gravitate toward Athletics, Football, Union or other sports and not to Rugby League?

As a sport should we be actively targeting kids of this stature who are not currently part of our junior system? Have we got scouts looking for talent from athletics and other sports? Would that work? Could we tempt them into Rugby League, How?

Maybe we just don't have enough participation at all levels; the base of our talent pyramid just isn't broad enough.

Should there be an emphasis, within our coaching structures, on developing this type of player. Some kind of coordinated coaching directive to ensure we have development of all positions at any one time thereby avoiding the lack of quality in any one position. As we're seeing in the National three-quarter line right now.

Do we actually teach 'Game Sense' at an early enough age to make our athletes as 'football intelligent' as they need to be. Believe me it can be taught and improved, we can't just wait for the next freak (Murphy, Gregory, Fox, and Hanley) to come along.

We need to develop our juniors along those lines or we will always generate big battering rams and never a Greg Inglis.
How many players are [ispacially aware [/ior have highly developed [igame instincts[/i which allows you to invariably make the correct decisions or correct plays, even when under extreme pressure (See Darren Lockyer).

Australia generate player after player after player they do this generation after generation and it's not by accident. I know they pretty much have the pick of the crop but they also place emphasis on the subtleties of the game at an early age and they persevere with that element of a player’s development.

Someone like Ryan Atkins would never be allowed to reach his age and not know how to position his winger, influence the defensive line and execute a pass, and when and where to do all that.

We still have a long way to go.

Really? i thought he was work horse in defence (pretty sure he made more tackles than any other back), was a major part of the reason the aussies never managed to break through our left (along with ellis and hall), twice managed to tackle hard enough to dislodge the ball in the tackle (including one where they had broke through and looked like they could score), pushed an aussie player into touch near there line, which resulted in the ellis try. He made meters when he did actually see the ball, ran pretty well from dummy half on occasions when he was asked to, got away a great offload under pressure that had roby been able to catch would very likely have resulted in a try. And to top all this off managed to make no errors (or if he did it was in the first 4-5 minutes of the match that i missed) and conceded no penalties.

Doesnt sound like an 'out of his depth' performance to me.

Have to agree, we did'nt see a lot od Hodges and Hayne and some of that has to be down to Shenton, Hall and Ellis's defence.

He also had a decent tilt at the Ausie line and he certainly went for it being brought down just a couple of yards short.

He's been anonymous in his previous England games and whilst he was quiate yesterday he did what he was asked to and made the most of any opportunites that came his way.

Hmm, he probably is out of his depth, but I fail to see who else is available, without playing people out of position e.g. Ellis (or winger Smith playing international centre

).

His defence, whilst adequate, lacks any bite - when the Aussie backs tackled our backs, there was a clear difference e.g. Tomkins getting pulled about like a rag doll. Shenton is most noticably out of his depth physically.

However, one the ONE occasion he had the ball with a gap to go at, he looked exciting and dangerous - this perhaps says something about the backs inside him.

Shenton hasn't done anything to write home about, but he hasn't done anything wrong either and should be given chance to continue and develop.

Its been frustrating how little ball he has seen and when he does get the ball more often than not he's not in a position to do anything with it, got a couple of hospital passes from tompkins yesterday.

shenton is the least of our worries. ok he wasn't a stand out but was solid enough in the context of the game, especially compared to the likes of smith who was all over the place. eastmond needs to start and the only place i can see him playing is in the centre. if he replaces shenton over smith that would be scandalous imo

You could say the same about every player i.e making yards from dummy half and offloading balls as most did in the 2nd half.

OK I may have been a bit harsh saying what I did considering he had to mark the best centre in the world.Still think we had better options within Super League to play centre against this potent strike force.

I for one do think Shenton is a shining light at International level but the lad was thrown in against the might of the Aussies and ideally wasn't given a chance to stand out in my view.

For the record I would have liked to see Joe Westerman in the team as he has the ability to break the line/offload/kick and the size to counter the Roos and Kiwis.

Agree about Lee Smith's positioning also,He scored but how many gaps did he leave open when the ball went wide?Stand by my word with regards him joining Union and should be nowhere near an International jersey at this point in time.