Who mentioned Brough. Last time we were in Aus Robinson was the outstanding half back and never considered this time, but Myler and Ratchford from Warrington also overlooked. But he picks half backs from teams finishing 3rd (and not even a half back ) and 12 ( and he`s not even English ).
What a plonker.

Kevin Sinfield has been the most influential player in any side during the SL era - simple.

To add to the list of T. Burgess and Mossop, I don't think Ablett is good enough for Internationals either. Personally I think McNamara is not up for the job, there is a better England team to be picked and I think he's going with 'safe' options rather than picking players newer to the International stage but coming off the back of a good SL season.

You appear to think you're less transparent than you actually are

Do you actually watch any NRL?
They could afford to leave Daly Cherry-Evans out of their squad who would walk into any other team in the world.
Plus there are a number of other half backs coming through who'd also be an improvement on anything we can offer.
I think that unforced errors were the main difference yesterday.
Unfortunately The Aussies will improve, Cronk was very quiet & other than the catch for the Thurston try Inglis was comparatively anonymous too.
The fact that they can afford to leave Jennings out speaks volumes for the depth of the Aussie backs.
We should have capitalised on catching them cold.

Has been or still is ? And for how much longer.

He is a player in decline - even in decline he has very few superiors

Have to agree.

However I still say Tomkins would be better in the halves taking the place of Chase - Sinfield looked the better of the two - with Hardaker at FB. (Pretty sure he would not have been outjumped by Ingliss). Widdop was a waste of space and would have another forward on the bench; it also has to be said Ablett is not an international at this level.

As for George Burgess....who was it that said props have to have matured a great deal before they can be considered world class??

Bring on the kids ...

The NRL.com player ratings have Sinfield at 8 out of 10. The highest mark they gave any England player.

I suppose some people will just describe them as a parochial Sydney based website that are biased in favour of the Golden Boot winer.

I thought Sinfield had a very good game yesterday

Get over on to TRL,that's hilarious.Should be nowhere near the England set up,doesn't offer anything at all to the team.

It's a nightmare over there, there's a few posters who just cannot accept Simfield could possibly play well.

Honest opinion Sinfield has been a great leader for Leeds no one can doubt that, he's a great kicker both with ball in hand and goal kicker.

However how he won worlds best player is beyond me, The Aussies had 3 better players in the same team to start off with in Cronk, Slater and Smith and Tomkins over here was playing better.

Sinfield bit like kick and claps Johnny Wilkinson, great kicker but does he really do all that much with ball in hand or beat a man?

As for England the form halfbacks would have been Smith of Wigan and Brough of Huddersfield.

Will be a Kiwi vs Aussie Final

What Sinfield brings is structure and a reasonably cool head under pressure, without which England would look absolutely clueless. We shouldn't need a halfback to just bring that - any top class half back should - but in terms of English there aren't any who can be RELIED on to do it in big games.

That's not to say he'll create bucketloads of tries, or make breaks all over the field. But I've seen plenty of GB/England teams in recent years where the attacking play is literally all over the place because neither halfback has a clue how to run a set of six. The result against Australia is basically embarrassing.

I'd have no problem picking a more dangerous attacking halfback than Sinfield, IF he could also organise. That isn't a strength of Chase or Widdopp (possibly in the future). Brough hasn't ever delivered when it counts, and took his bat home anyway.

As for McNamara, I still am not sure about his actual coaching, but none of the problems England had yesterday were of his making.

What about moving Sinfield from 7 to 9? That was clearly pre planned.

You're right - I agree that wasn't a good move. Nobody should need to move a halfback when spelling a hooker. I wonder if it was more about wanting Widdopp on the bench than anything else?

If only Roby could play 80 minutes we'd be able to have a far better balanced bench.

I agree regarding smith, but brough although he's had a great season, he chose Scotland and I don't think SMC is a fan of players switching nationalities, which I agree with once you play for one national side that should be that. I know other countries do it but it doesn't make it anymore right.
It's more confusing the non-inclusion of Lunt nd crabtree IMO

Spot on mate, I'm fed up of reading the half back, mainly Sinfield, bashing on here and twitter. Its astonishing the mental disability so called knowledgeable Rugby League fans have at times. The mistakes were obvious. The mistakes that lead to Australia putting points on the board are simply not good enough at this level. Did Sinfield or Chase for that matter do anything absolutely world class off the scale stuff? No. did they do their jobs and not do anything to put the Aussies to an advantage? Yes. If the team completes the sets, has a low penalty count and generally stay error free and still lose the game then question the half backs, until then its complete nonsense.

Very true.The last time we did those things in a big game against the big 2 was the 2011 4N against the Kiwis and Sinfield was exeptional.

We had around 40% of the ball in that second half on Sat. and most of that was in our own half.even the Aussie halves would struggle to impact a game on the back of that.for the record i thought Sinfield was one of our better players on the day but that wont stop people with an agenda against him pointing the finger at him when we lose as it was their de fault setting to do so before the competition even began.

Mate it was inevitable Sini would burden the blame of any England short comings.

If England had won would there still be so many people talking about Sinfield, I wonder?

For me, he was one of the best players on the park. Cool headed and did his job well. We lost because of selection issues, silly mistakes, head high tackles, knock ons and general poor defense. Oh, and the alleged best player in SL dropping the high ball (why put someone who can't catch in at fullback? Anyone? Anyone?)

How can we watch all that and then go on to try and blame Sinfield or to suggest that if he hadn't of been playing we would have won?

For me, the problem lies in the coach. Once again, reputation picked the side. As an example, Lunt should have been there instead of Roby.

Let's be honest, McNamara, who failed with the Bulls, is hardly the best man for the job. Is it realistic to expect the national side to win anything with him in charge, or shall we just continue to moan about Sinny?

We lost by 8 points. I'm not blaming Tomkins for the loss, but a class fullback would have resulted in two of the Aussie tries not being scored. Not sure how that is Sinfields fault.

Quite so.
Seeing Tomkins drop it in heavy traffic early on I thought the Aussies would pressure him under more high ball after that.

It was, with 10 minutes to go I was thinking no doubt Sinfield will get bashed for this.

Sinfield was the lazy barsteward that strolled towards the 40/20 and blamed to linesman for his lazy ass work. That was a disgrace by Charnley, you're in a test match, get there asap and run the ball back as far up field as physically possible to help your team, no excuse for strolling back and Charnley got what he deserved.