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?

We seem to be masters at the long kick when a short one is needed & at the short, high one when a long raking kick along the ground is required.
Williams short kicking was better than than Brown, Widdop or Gale.
The latter three were all equally bad at putting their back three under pressure.
Sad to say for Williams truly to improve he needs to go to the NRL.
I think he'd be a wow over there.
He'll be good over here in a field of one.
Over there he would have so much competition that he couldn't help but get better.
That only leaves us to find a hooker, scrum half & full back.

A lot of that comes with younger players playing both codes throughout the year. The need for a kicking game to touch in Union is not there, and players playing both tend to go into how they usually play. Then on the other side good scrum halfs tend to be pushed into hookers roles these days, for a different game style.

These combined have resulted in a massive shortage of the out and out scrum half, with the game organsising, controlling, kicking game role they should have. This is why for that particular role in it's self, someone as disliked as Danny Brough is in a league of his own. Shame he is approaching the end of his career. A lot of coaches seem to thing they can ge by with a partnership of runners, rather than a supplier there.

I think that Watkins and Percival are our two best centres and as such they need to play. The Aussie centres are several classes above though (O'Neill was superb against NZ). I don't think anyone in the game currently or in the past would have dealt with Inglis yesterday. Sometimes you just have to hold your hand up and say - 'they were better'.

Watkins does need to work much harder at this game though, because Inglis showed him what he should be aiming for. Watkins has the athleticism and physique to be a much better player than he is. He could start by learning to pass the ball

Williams could be a very fine half back...if he is going to move though, he needs to go soon as he will soon be (if not already) the best half in SL and will be able to rest on his laurels which is only natural, where he really needs to be in the best league improving to their highest level which is clearly several rungs above where we are.

Speaking of passing, Bateman had a good game yesterday but does he EVER pass the ball

Not a strong point, though when he played centre he put Manfredi in for quite a few tries. Mind you he was quite successful at giving Hall a few opportunities against NZ last year when he was played at centre for England - something that Watkins seems to be immune from.

I first noticed this in the 2013 World Cup mainly because as a Wigan fan I wanted Josh Charnley to get lots of opportunity to show off. Watkins is an incredibly frustrating player, in part because you know he should be capable of doing much better. I'm betting McGilvary is glad Jonny Lomax is in the team.

The rate he seems to be putting on weight though suggests he could be our next ball handling prop in a couple of years.

I take your point but i'm still really struggling to think of too many opportunities Watkins had to create anything for his winger over the entire three games. I too think he is frustrating and has not fulfilled his potential but i also think people have been overly critical of him this series, he just hasn't really been given the space and opportunities to shine and has had to feed off scraps for the most part.

Watkins was facing arguably the best centre in RL so no surprise he didn't create much.
How many passes did Sarginson give Hall?
Percival couldn't pass to Hall because he wasn't able to collect the ball in the first place.
Watkins needs space & time, something the Aussies don't allow.

And I suppose to be fair I don't think anyone would have coped particularly well with Greg Inglis who is quite possibly one of the greatest to ever play the game.

We didn't cope well with Inglis as a team imo. When the ball was going in his direction the whole of our right flank was back peddling instead of getting in his face. We gave him far too much respect and it bit us hard early in the second half.