England's best centre was Bateman on Saturday which rather highlights how poor was the performance from Watkins. Was it nerves or a lack of concentration? You can only earn the tile of being world class by proving it in big games including the international stage.

Watkins has been great this year. Lets look on bright england still won, his defence has been good over the series and poor game yesterday won't get the nrl or union teams knocking the door down

It's been a while since England have been able to have so many players supposedly not living up to their potential but still manage to win a series.

To be fair, Watkins has produced in all the big games this season, and he's been solid and shown glimpses of his talent for England. So the notion that he only looks good against the likes of Wakey is inaccurate.

Love how the usual Wigan idiots have got some digs in. International season gives them a chance to vent and gain back some ground after another season of falling short. It makes them sleep a little better after how gutted the 2014/15 seasons have left them. I only know one pie who is a total champion bloke and he is not even from Wigan. Most appear to be bitter single minded bell ends.

Watkins doesnt have to cover the centre at all in fact he expressly shouldnt commit to the centre, because that creates space on the outside leaving nightingale in acres of space with men on his inside. Watkins commits to Kahu and that ball goes outside to Nightingale, back inside to Luke and he walks over.

Watkins defended that brilliantly, his positioning meant that Kahu had to come inside where Smith should have executed the tackle, and had offload to Luke which was by far the most difficult option.

Had Smith executed the tackle on HIS man, that try doesnt get scored, had O'loughlin not given up the chase he would have tackled luke and that try wouldnt have been scored, Had McGilvary covered his man (i.e done what Watkins did) then Luke would have had to beat Hardaker to get over and that try would likely not have been scored. All of those were only options because of Watkins not committing to Kahu. But they were also very very difficult for England to do, and NZ executed brilliantly. None of those would have been necessary had the entire defensive line not been so out of position.

It isnt a point that is really up for debate, its a nonsense idea that Watkins should throw himself at the centre when there is a defender on his inside and an overlap on his outside. Its an idea someone would only put forth if they were scratching and searching for some kind of back up to their ridiculous position.

Watkins dropped a lot of ball in slippery conditions. It happens, His ball retention isnt his greatest skill. He also got outside his man a few times, he made space on his inside a few times, he defended well covering a couple of times for a winger on his debut who wasnt used to the swing defence he was been asked to play.

As for looking average in previous internationals, did you not watch see the angle of his run when going over in the WC semi? Breaking 3 tackles to go over against the aussies in the 4 nations last year?

Mate you are right but why bother? His comments are totally agenda driven.

It was a number of factors for that try.

Firstly we commit 3 guys to the tackle and they don't dominate the ball carrier which leaves Roby scrambling back in defence whilst the ball is already being passed from dummy half.

Secondly to compound it both Tom Burgess and O'Loughlin are too slow to realise we were short on that side. It was 7 NZ players to 2 so both Watkins and Smith were on a hiding to nothing. It was a similar problem on the previous play with 8 NZ guys against 4 England guys but the NZ ball carrier just ran it up instead of spreading it wide.

After the break then McGillivery shouldn't be coming in to get a guy who Hardaker could get and made it an easy decision to pass to the try scorer. When Hardaker did a post match bit with Jon Wells he talked about how he likes to back off and give the attacker more time to think instead of making the decision for him and it allows his fellow defenders more time to come help out. If McGillivery hadn't bolted over straight away it makes life much harder to score that try with Hardaker and Widdop coming across.

Interesting if you watch the replay of the try from the camera angle from behind the posts. Just as the NZ player is breaking Smith's tackle, O'Loughlin just has a little pull on the back of one of the New Zelanders shirt that halts that Kiwi adding to the NZ numbers in support.

Wonder what Wigan fans think of O'Loughlin trying to pull on the shirt of a support player?

Quite! Massive slice of double standards coming up!

I don't understand what the issue is with the man or the series trying to pull someone back to stop a try.

Can someone please explain.

love it!

Clearly England's biggest weakness in attack and defence is out wide. We played with a bit more width in the 3rd Test but it never really looked like England were going to create overlaps or structure plays good enough to get a winger over. Similarly England's backs look particularly clueless as a unit when the ball is spread wide.

We clearly have a pack capable of matching Aus/NZ now - even before the better Burgii play. However, we seem to get stuck into the mindset of playing through the middle because the forwards are making yards, rather than using yardage and quick PTBs to get width into the game.

Watkins can do better than he did (I'm not sure he looks 100% fit), as can others, and for England to beat Australia we need as many players as possible to play out of their skins.

Oh those Rugby Gods may not agree with you.

And that is down to the coaching.We have a three quarter line now capable of causing problems yet not one of them scored or looked like scoring a try in this series.We need a new head coach to take us to the next level imo, we are very close now i just don't have faith In McNamara and Lowes getting us on the other side of a close defeat against the big 2 at full strength.

My point exactly.

We beat a very poor weakened NZ team.....and only 2 out of the 3. just! Apart from the one Burgess brother, England were picking from strength.

Next year we can add:
S Burgess
G Burgess
Tomkins
Reed

I think anyone who expected England to put on an expansive gameplan featuring a ton of back line moves and lots of ball movement, in the deciding test of a series in torrential rain, with two half-backs who hadn't played together for twelve months was in cloud cuckoo land.

It's like saying that England were picking from strength when they had arguably four of their best 17 missing. And what kind of idiot would do that?

It was good to win a series, but it felt like a hollow victory. We have a lot of improvement to find if we are going to seriously challenge in the four nations and beyond that the next RLWC. Granted we have some very good players to come back into the squad, but under the current coaching team......?

Perhaps Walmsley and Cuthbertson also although both untested at this level.

Watkins was hyped before the game - on the red button - and had an absolute mare ball in hand where almost everything he touched turned to .... Defensively I thought he stood up well and made some great decisions in difficult situations while New Zealand clearly saw some potential for themselves out on our right flank.

Agreed.
England were short defenders on the right for much of the game, Watkins spent a lot of the game defending one in from touch, only later in the second half did Smith consistently move out that wide between him and he winger. I lost count of the number of times we had 2-3 defenders only between the post and the touchline on the right, at one point in the first half Watkins was 2-3 yards from the line of the post and he was our widest defender, McGillvery was diretly behind him - and this was inside our 20. Not sure which back row was supposed to be defending right side but they were non existant for much of the match. The way the centre and winger scrambled was tremendous. I got the impression that most of the forwards we used in the back row are much more comfortable defending in the middle here they have to move less and make fewer decisions.
I'm suprised NZ didn't exploit it more, on a better weather day with their first choice halves they could have done some major damage.

But once again we are debating, at length, with trolls from Wigan this time (why reply to these bell ends who are obviously trying to paper over the mental scars left by a potless season and a Leeds treble) who exactly was to blame for tries conceded in a game where "our" team won. It's simply not good enough that England win the test and the series, it has to be because of one teams players and despite the underperforming, over hyped players from another. Fact is everyone played pretty well and did some good things, and most people made mistakes but it was enough to post a good win over NZ and win a series for the first time in 8 years.

Maybe we should all go over to the Wigan site & pillory their super captain & MoS(eries) for stupidly giving away yet another needless penalty in front of our posts almost immediately after he'd scored thereby nullifying his effort.
Not the first stupid penalty he'd given away either.

From memory Whitehead (who's a pretty ordinary defender at the best of times, the NRL is going to expose his deficiencies cruelly unless he sorts it out), then Ferres, then back to Whitehead again.

For feck's sake, we have just won a test series for the first time in years! Let's enjoy the feeling and also remember that despite missing top quality players like Johnson, the NZ team had more caps between them than the England side.

Sure, we are not perfect and it is a work in progress but we are improving and two to three years ago, would have lost this series.

2 years ago we were seconds away from beating a far better NZ side in the WC semi final which had SBW,Johnson,JWH,Foran etc... i have no doubt that England team would have beaten this lot too and probably done it more handily.That said, you are right in that we need to celebrate the victory as they are very rare, however forgive me if i don't get too carried away yet, next years 4 nations will be a far bigger pointer to where we stand now on the world stage.