Can England beat Australia?

Starting point of any discussion is the injury situation. According to Wayne Bennett at the post-match press conference Joshua Hodgson will not play in the final, and Sean O'Loughlin is in doubt.

The answer to the question is. Yes

However the wrong question is being asked .

The question should be is will England best Australia.

The answer to that is. NO.

Too much quality in the Australian halves England are one centre and a LHS attack short.
Everything else is about equal

I think we can do it, but only if we erase the errors. First 20 v Tonga was almost perfect. We need to do that for 80 mins to beat them.

You have to be in it to win it, and we are in it!

No

32-4 to Aus I reckon unfortunately

Although there'd be more risk of a hammering, I feel Tonga would at least have had a 'puncher's chance'.

The hope is that the stars align and players like Burgess and Graham raise their games to their highest heights to get a fantastic crowning achievement. It just feels like a lot of stars have to align.

The fear is Australia start strongly and England fail to cope, and you all get to know how I felt at Wembley in 2015.

The expectation is that we'll play a low risk game to keep down errors, but not score enough points. It'll be tense, we may even lead briefly, but a somewhat bloodless effort until Graham loses his rag as the Aussies run in the second of their three late tries.

No. I'd love it to be yes, but no. Australia have defence and attack. We have defence but a very limited attack. Australia also never lose composure, with Cronk/Smith/Slater acting as human beta blockers to keep their team straight for 80 minutes. England are very brittle psychologically. They don't believe they can win, and when pressure is really on, as in the last ten minutes today, they crumble. I wouldn't back us to defend a narrow lead against Australia, but I would back the Australians to defend any lead against us.

The forwards will roughly cancel each other out. But the Australian halves are so much better than ours it's not funny. I think it's fair to say that our halves wouldn't be in the top five or six combinations in this world cup, while our forwards would be joint top. Meanwhile you've got one decent threequarter partnership with Watkins and McGilvary, and one mediocre one in Bateman and Hall.

I think what this World Cup has done - and I've enjoyed it tremendously - has been to re-order what we think about international RL. It used to be the Big Three, and then the rest, or Tier 1 and Tier 2. I think what we now have is four tiers. You've got Australia out on their own and unchallengable. Then England are a clear second, as they showed in the first 70 minutes today. Then you have a group of very competitive nations who could upset England, but not the Aussies: basically NZ, Tonga and Fiji. Finally, you have the rest, France and the "heritage" teams.

We're no closer to challenging Aussie dominance internationally, but below that level it's a much healthier picture.

Not sure how Graham could raise his game, he was MOM by a long way for me today, although they gave it to Widdop.

In 400 minutes of RL, Australia have conceded 3 tries.
They've scored 37.
To have any chance at all we have to stop them scoring.
Not impossible but highly unlikely.

Anything is possible I just feel Gale and Brown are the weak links and unfortunately there the positions you can't have weak links

No, halfbacks aren't good enough, even when the forwards have been on top they have been average, kicking game is terrible.

The worrying thing, is that there are not many other options in our game at the moment.

Can Eddie the Eagle make it to the Olympics?
Of course we can beat them, but we’re certainly underdogs.

Heart yes, head no. We have no attack, our kicking game is poor at best. But we've been very good generally in defence.

But anything can happen in 80 mins (or 10 as Tonga proved). So I'm hopeful till the teams announced anyway.

Unlikely. The English players would have to produce defensive performances of their lives because I think best case scenario we'll only score 12-16 points and even that might be pushing it.

Kicking game has to improve.

We have to ask more question of the defence. We started well with inside balls off forwards but tgat fell away in 2nd half.

SoL has to be fit. We have an extra link in attack when he's on the field, when he's off we panic when within 20 yards.

Aus need an off day - it can happen.....

Of course we CAN beat them.

But I don't think we will. With our pack well on top our halves should have had a field day and been running riot with a strong kicking game too... they didn't.

Against Australia our pack is likely to be equal at best and without the pack on the front foot against a far far better defence than we've faced today I just don't see our halves troubling the Aussies much at all.

I hope I'm wrong, and if the stars align then who knows!

Who do we play in place of O'Loughlin and Hodgson if they dont recover in time?

Hodgson's easy - we put in Roby for 80 minutes, and we lose nothing tbh.

SOL is a much bigger loss. I guess that Currie starts in the second row, with S Burgess going to loose.

Who gets brought into the 17 is then a bigger issue. I can imagine he might bring in Lomax as cover for fullback and the halves, as I think Lomax is the only one of the squad who featured in his original thinking, and I don't detect huge flexibility from Bennett once he's made his mind up.

In terms of the forward replacement, I imagine it'll be Heighington. Bennett will default to NRL where possible.

SOL is a big loss, because we have nobody similar. But next week's game will be lost in the halves, not the forwards. Brown's done the job he was brought in to do, but isn't going to trouble the Aussies, and Gale continues to disappoint at this level. As others have pointed out, he's had plenty of opportunity in this tournament, playing behind a pack which has given him all the time and space in the world. But he's created little, and his kicking game has been very disappointing, considering what we've watched him do for Cas all season.

The real killer for me is that however underwhelming I find our halves, the fact is that I struggle to think of a better combination available to us. You could make a case for Sneyd, but I wouldn't feel much more confident if he was on the pitch than I do with Gale. Widdop is our best stand-off, but he's also our best fullback, and where he plays seems to me to be dictated by whether we think Lomax at fullback instead of Widdop loses us more than Brown at stand-off instead of Widdop, and I think Bennett probably made the right call on that.

We have a real dearth of English halfback talent in the SL. No up and coming equivalent of Sean Long, Bobby Goulding, Andy Gregory or even Danny Maguire in their pomp. We also have a big problem at centre, although I think Bennett has made a real misjudgement in favouring Bateman over Percival. Nevertheless, after Percival, it's hard to think of another international-class English centre.

These are real problem positions for us, and have been problem positions for some time. There's a good argument that we should make English halves and centres not count towards the salary cap until we have rectified this worrying shortage.

Would just play Roby for the 80. Just needs to have similar breaks to smith when the the team have possession.

Wouldn't mind seeing Williams get the utility roll as I think he is the most dangerous of the options.

Expect Burgess to 13 and currie to start. With mcmeekan on the bench.

What a shame that Hardaker seemingly can't be disciplined - our best FB of could have played centre. Would have been much stronger with him.

What a shame that Hardaker seemingly can't be disciplined - our best FB of could have played centre. Would have been much stronger with him.

First final in 22 years and it is story number 26 on the sky sports home page on the app.

Looking forward to next weekend. Scott Taylor on the bench for Hodgson next week for me if Hodgson isn't fit.

Could we put Graham at LF? We often see a third prop at 13 and we know he can play a bit!

We all know Heighington will be on the bench ahead of Taylor or McMeeken if O'Loughlin isn't fit.

Aye, his indiscretion probably cost Cas the title, and it could well have ruined England's chances of the World cup.

I'd like to think any young centre playing in SL next year will be busting a gut to force their way into the squad. If Percival can add some physicality to his game he's definitely the front runner, but hopefully the likes of Sutcliffe, Gildart and Connor can have a great season as well. Sutcliffe and Connor have the psychical attributes, they just need an extended run in that position.