Ray Warren: 'I'm loving the job the English ref is doing tonight, letting the game flow.'

Never thought I'd hear the words . . .

He was excellent in defence. One loose carry apart he was solid.

they need follow up aswell. At best it's likely 3 more years until they play a top 3 side

Surely that was offside from the kick? The first bloke that passed it was infront of the kicker...

I don't disagree. I just think too often Watkins is solid or even good when he has the potential to absolutely dominate games.

Watkins has all the tools to be constantly dangerous. Too often he is solid.

That's what I was going to say. Too often solid. He is an explosive match-winner but you don't see it often enough.

I would like to see him stand slightly deeper, and run at gaps more. Space won't just magically appear at this level, you have to create it.

Tomkins could potentially be banned anyway for a knee twist on the Samoan lad in the 2nd half.

Poor ball retention allowed them into the game.

We had an 80% completion. They were 91%. We then had to make and extra 56 compared tackles to them.

Every stat is in their favour. But the final score.

For England.James Graham led the tackle count with 34. Westerman 33. Chris Hill made the most metres 115 (in 13 runs, joint runs with George Burgess)

Spotted that straight away. Not sure it was intentional though.

[url=http://live.nrlstats.com/matches/nrl/match33661.html[uOnly if you believe 4 missed tackles equates to "excellent in defence"[/u[/url.

I suppose it is in Whinos Fan World.

3) he made several try saving tackles which seem to be overlooked

1 and a half.

Is one and a half an "excellent performance" on your radar?

Or does that only apply to Leeds players who miss 4 tackles?

I heard the commentators say that Hodgson has gone to the NRL? I was baffled by that.

He was anonymous today and I've rarely noticed him in Super League. Solid grafter, but nothing special.

Clark had that one good run for the try and a shocking missed tackle for their try. He's still young though.

We miss Roby and McIlorum at Hooker. They dominate the rook area.

Interested to know why you think that?

What part of his game is missing?

He's literally our best player.

He's a 6/7 playing 1 imo. Always has been. Can get away with it in SL because teams don't put him under pressure enough on the high bombs. I haven't watched his NRL games, but I'd suspect they're targeting him in that area. It's a weakness that he's never fixed.

Errors galore, no impact, rarely won the collusion and failed to create any space out wide. I'd be tempted to start Flanders in the 2nd row net week with Tom Burgess starting at 13 as a 3rd prop.

Dont agree with one word of that but there you go.

He's a Whinos fan who is still annoyed because Carl Ablett wasn't selected at all, Hardaker wasn't at full back, Burrow wasn't favoured ahead of Hodgson and Clark and both Sinfield and Peacock are sadly now internationally retired. England would have won by 50 with that lot playing alongside the solid and excellent Watkins and the World's Best Winger Hall.

I can see why you would disagree with picking Tom Burgess at 13 but I don't see how you could argue the back row weren't rubbish.

Well, the fact that two of them were the games top tacklers and that they only made two errors between them might be an inkling.

Also the fact that many posters had a ridiculous agenda against the back row before hand was an issue that seems to keep on going.

Out of the backrow I thought Ferres was the most disappointing. He was very good in the World Cup but looked down on his best form today. I thought Westerman and Tomkins went pretty well tbh and they'd be in my 17 next week. As for Farrell he showed his try scoring ability and a skill to run superb lines for his try but overall it wasn't his best. He didn't play enough minutes for me though. He's an 80 minute player but at this level with the size of the opposition I can understand Macca not doing that.

To sum up I'd bring in O'Loughlin and Whitehead next week with Ferres and Farrell to miss out.

I enjoyed the game.Yes we made some bad errors and gave away a lot of penalties, and there are lots of areas to tidy up especially around the ruck.But it was the first hit out for this team and it was a real good physical battle, we got the result and as long as we can tidy things up we should be much much better next week off the back of this.

I agree with that, Westerman is copping a bit of criticism over the internet but i don't think he was too bad at all. He looked ok in attack and will only get better considering he hasn't played in 6 weeks.