I think we had a poor England squad out against a poor Aussie squad and it was poorly refereed. I don't think there is anything more to say really. We are not as bad as people are making out and when we got field position we did very well with the ball in hand and walked two tries in under the sticks. We are not as good as them, but they have a bigger pool of players to pick from.

There is one area where SL appears now to be stronger and I never thought I would say this... but it is in the refereeing! I said after last weeks games that I was wondering if the two ref system was actual making the standard of individual ref'ing in the NRL weaker and Mr Archer did nothing to dissuade me from that opinion. He was poor and I think his error rate for call and his missed call rate was laughably high. He also appears to lack both rapport and authority with the players, bring back Steve Ganson I say!

He started off with a shocking call and got worse, he had no consistency in his calls at all around the ruck and sometimes both sides got away with murder and other times they were called out for nothing. The forward passes were of course a joke. It is one of the hardest calls of course to see and make for a ref, but of the four forward passes in the game Archer missed two blatant ones, one of which was a crucial call. He gets a 5 out of 10 for me and this is not good enough for international level. Silverwood, Bentham and of course Ganson are much better and even Alibert runs Archer close IMO. While we got the crap and of the stick with the calls, he is not biased, he just not good enough.

The video ref'ing was a joke and as someone has said on the VT the NRL should hang it's head in shame if that is the best they can do. The Cronk knock-on was very clear on the replays and even the Aussie player knew it was not a try and that is why they set up for the tap. He then caps it all with the Lunt try... I don't think it was try BTW but not to make a decision and use that soft Aussie cop out call of 'refs call' was just poor after he had given the Aussie try as a BOD. It was either a no-try and or a BOD try and he probably already knew he was going to criticised and then took an easy way out of a difficult call.

Of course, the issue the as far as I am aware a ref's call is not allowed international rules (unless someone can prove otherwise) it just proves what a crap idea it is and they can keep that in Aus.

A poor England side, a poor Aus side and a poor ref'ing display... it was poor!

Agree- if he is the best Aussie ref then what are the rest of them like.Even Childs is better than him and thats saying something.
The BOD is an absolute joke,if they do not definitely believe it is a try the BOD should go to the defending side not the attacking side.
Saying that, we are still years behind them in terms of fitness and strength,which unfortunately overides any skill factor these days,although we can no longer even claim that over them like we used to be able to years ago.

Just posted this on the VT -

Their argument for having both calls in the NRL does not make logical sense but I know what they will say about both calls...

The BOD was a try if Cronk didn't knock-the ball on, which he did of course, so as the video ref was unsure about the knock-on and they did score then it a try BOD.

The Lunt try was either a try or not a try (in NRL warped logic) because no offence took place before the try was scored or not scored, if you know what I mean. As such the video ref was unsure if it was or was not a try, now in SL it therefore has to be a try but in the NRL it doesn't because he can say, well I can't decide either way, so you can have it back to decide yourself!

Confusing, oh yes, because in some situations you can have a BOD but in others it does not apply and therefore the video ref has to make that call, it is not automatically implied like in SL.

It is a shocking system and one I still don't the International Board have sanctioned for International RL... so we think?

Can anyone prove otherwise?

Our pack were pretty good - the backs were poor to say the least. Cudjoe was well out of his depth.

Can't ever see us beating the Oz unless we start to produce some quality three-quarters. The fact that a 35 year old is still the best English centre by some distance is a real sad state of affairs.

I'm not quite sure how to take this.... is it irony? Are you delusional?

Sam Tompkins totally exposed to the whole rugby world yesterday as a one trick pony. Only got this far due to Stevo getting over-excited about him!

Worst England team I have seen over last couple of games.

Far too many Steady Eddies.

Is that not Stevo & Eddies?!

When will people realise that just because they say a player is good....doesn't always mean they should be picked for England, or that they're even good?!

Best centres in the SL are still Keith Senior and Martin Gleeson,why not pick em then ?

Sam Tomkins is a very good player, but not (yet) a great player. This also applies to 75% of our national team.

JP (pre injury), Gaz Ellis, Sam Burgess, James Graham and to a lesser degree Mozza (past his peak IMO) are our only world class players at the moment, all of whom are forwards.

tompkins needs to learn another trick if he wants to reach the next level. one trick pony at the moment

Big Keith has retired from rep RL as far as I know, plus he's had/having surgery on his shoulder so couldn't have gone down under anyway. I'm amazed Gleeson was over-looked as his post season form was fantastic.

Verdict: Not good enough.

Gleeson and Senior do still remain the best of the English centres. How depressing is that? No disrespect to them, but how have we managed to only produce 2 vaguely international-quality centres in the last 15 years. Atkins nad Shenton are half decent, but that's all, yet they were the only 2 picks McBanana could have made. They're easily the best English centres (Senior and Gleeson apart) in the league. Cudjoe looked miles out of his depth, but what were the alternatives? I think people are a bit hard on our wingers, where I do think we've got some decent young players, but at centre we remain royally screwed. Forget depth, we don't even have a surface.

On the subject of strength and fitness,, I can't see the excuse for the NRL being so far ahead of us. Both nations have full time players, full time coaches and access to decent facilities. Disparities in skill level are hard to adadress, and may well go right back to junior coaching, but surely we can manage fitness training.

I think if I had cash to invest in elite level RL at the moment, I'd bank roll the expanded world club championship for a few years. It isn't commercially viable because the UK/Europe clubs weren't competitive. I can think of no better way to improve that than by exposing our players to NRL opposition a few more times a season. It won't happen, because nobody wants to pay to watch our painful learning curve, but it would probably help a bit.

All that said, our forwards held their own in the up-the-middle stuff most of the time. We lack any real creativity and flair at that level though. Which is disappointing. We have some talent in the halves, but perhaps they need to do an apprenticeship in the NRL where the defences are tougher to break down to help them realise their potential.

Then all we need to do is clone a few world class centres (maybe take eggs from Greg Inglis's mum and combine them with Matt Gidley's sperm or something - that should mean the strongest offspring have the full skill set) and then raise the young in a Sparta-esque environment of constant centre play until they're 18. The best 3 or 4 could then go into the England squad. Simples.

El D were you brought up in East Germany?

Disagree - Chris Bridge is our most naturally gifted centre option IMO, it was a big blow when he made himself unavailable.

Shenton looked good in the NZ game and offered as much as Senior/Gleeson have in an England/GB shirt more recently.

Gleeson should have been on the plane though. Atkins is a garbage centre but a good winger.

Pfft, amateurs.

Chris Bridge is moot.

He NEEDS plenty of space and time on the ball, he wouldn't have had that against AUS + NZ. Would have been ineffective and would have seen zero quality ball anyway.

Atkins on the other hand is a big SL three quarter, look how he stacks up at this level, he looks small.

The whole England three quarters are a joke. Redundant of speed, skill, size and brains.

The half backs are a bigger joke.

Then Steve Mc thinks he sees a future for these players for the WC. He really is as awful as everyone thinks he is. Wage stealer.

I'm not sure that's true TBH, I see him as a player who can create space - he's got a RL brain and I think he'd go well at international level.



Brains is the key point - our outside backs have it too easy in SL and don't need to concentrate and focus on their game, in attack or defence. And boy does it show when they step up.

Our top wingers can afford to make silly errors in SL as their teams will usually come out on top regardless.



Shove McGuire/Sinfield/Pryce/Eastmond in as options in the halves and we start to look a lot better.



A lot of them have IMO. Tomkins was disappointing but he's only played full back for about 6 months - he'll improve. There was also never going to be any link for him to exploit with SOL at 6.

The likes of the Tomkins brothers, Burgess, Roby, Graham, Eastmond, McGuire, Cudjoe (wing!) etc do have a future at this level in my opinion, and I'm hoping we stick by them and try to help them develop towards the World Cup as we have the makings of a reasonably competitive team. Not world beater, but competitive.

They are stronger, no doubt.

The first 3 players you list though, these are players who we should be looking to super-seed now anyway. But the quality isn't there. Natural order should have come up with something!

We have yet to replace Andy Farrell in the international scene, is a great example of the stagnant levels of quality we are missing.

I feel the same will happen with Morley and JP. Nothing comes close. For props Graham is the closest. But for all his work-rate and heart, he doesn't ask too many questions and is solid rather than an aggressive influence. Which we need over 80 minutes not a 10 minute surge.

(ps why didn't Graham knock Cameron Smith into the middle of next week when he 'tapped'??? Opportunity missed.)

Then again we have Fielden (ahem).

If shenton had have come through with senior and gleeson he wouldn't even get a look in. Not in the same class, never will be one of the great English centres in my opinion unlike Schofield, Lydon, newlove, Senior.

Because he would have been sin-binned, and rightly so.

Cameron Smith chipping the ball back to himself doesn't put it back in play.

The ball is not back in play after the penalty is awarded until the referee blows his whistle or otherwise indicates play on. Archer was waiting for Darren Lockyer to decide what he wanted to do with the penalty before he did so.

If he had rattled him down, I doubt the ref would have sin-binned him.

Misunderstandings happen.

My MOM award goes to Phil Clarke, who once again availed us with his devestating knowledge of the game, "it's started raining, that should suit England". Of course it will Phil, SL players never make mistakes in wet weather. Cue the England fumbleathon and the Australian points avalanche.

It doesn't matter how highly certain players are rated by their fans, we could have 13 supermen out on then pitch, but if they can't control the ball then they won't win a game. I've been watching English/British players making the same basic mistakes under prerssure for nearly 30 years. When we play mistake free, we can win games, but mistake free football barely exists when British players pull on an international shirt. It's like collecting all the sloppiest players in SL and expecting them to beat the tidiest players in the southern hemisphere. To be fair, NZ have the same issue to an lesser extent. When they play mistake free they can actually blow Australia away, when they don't they can get embarrased just like us.

I thought the pack played okay, but Tomkins (J) is a great big pudding and clearly nowhere near international class, but when Burgess drops the ball while trying to simply play it you can't really get on top. Backs are what they are - crap. Atkins is a complete liability - what was the point in us putting together a greaty passing movement to bring the ball out of our half when that muppett tries to take Billy Slater on the outside and ends up in touch and turning the ball over? The wingers were non-existant and the other Tomkins telegraphed his every attack.

Phil Clarke was perhaps half right, when the heavens did really open it kept the Australians under a cricket score.

One crumb of comfort. After visiting the Sydney Football Stadium 20 years ago and getting soaked under the "roof" that was supposed to vortex rain away from the spectators I see the Aussies have still yet to master the art of putting a roof on a stadium that actually performs it's primary function - keeping the f*****g rain off the crowd.

Great post mate! On the money. I wasn't quite as harsh about tomkin Joel. But he is a massive disappoint and ineffective at this level. looked well out of his depth.

What a sad indictment: a " reasonably competitive team " ....does that really make you happy ? Gleeson nor Bridge would have made any difference. We have to stop pretending...

Who genuinely gets excited at or relishes an "international" unless it's between Oz and NZ ? P N G ? Be serious. World Cup ? Come on. Farcical.

I would much more pay to see eg Leeds, Saints, Auckland, Catalans, Rabbitohs etc in some sort of extended club challenge......where we have much more possibility of seeing hopefully much more competitive matches.