I don't think thurston will be bothered at all.

With him not been in the squad and all.

team for next week for me ...

Widdop
Briscoe
Shenton
Atkins
Hall
Brown
S Tomkins
Graham
Roby
Morley
Burgess
Ellis
O'Loughlin

Robinson
Fielden
J.Tomkins
Crabtree/Westwood/Griffin

Leave Roby starting and hope Robinson can have the impact he had today. Leave Brown and sam together and hopefully they flourish i think the only real decision NcNamara has is his Bench and what he wants from it. Impact Crabtree, another worhourse Westwood or Griffin and last option J.Tomkins who can do the hard work plus has a little more quality with ball in hand.

Think I'll give this 4 nations a miss tbh

Oh ever so sorry....not even seen the convicts squad bit i just assumed...how remiss of me.

Agree with thats apart from Brown.....shouldnt be no where near the team.

^^
I think that will be the best side

The problem with brown is he drifts out of the game for big patches we need players who get involved, robinson had a better game (but didnt do one good kick) than brown but i can see the flexibility in having tomkins/brown and robinson on the bench as he could do hooker/half if needed

robbo is a 9 not a 7. He was effective today at 9.

He rarely played at 9 today majority of the time was lunt/roby

Was at 9 til Tomkins left the field. So the whole 1st half spell was at 9.

Didn't see Lunt at all. Maybe because he was not picked.

lol it was 5am but i thought the commentators mentioned lunt a fair few times

Fair comment

Widdop

Briscoe
Shenton
Atkins
Hall

Tomkins
Robinson

Morley
Roby
Graham
Ellis
Burgess
O'Loughlin

Lunt
Fielden
Crabtree
Westwood

----------------

Is our best side. Even then I don't give us a hope.

Surely Roby is more effective coming on as a sub?

Yep, easy £150 in the back pocket

Well I reckon the Aussies are going to be concerned after that!

This.

I don't think we should be too concerned with the final score - the coach took Tomkins off and moved the halfs/full back combinations around to see what was available to him, that won't happen in a full test

For next week, while I am a big fan of Lunt at 9 I think Robinson did enough to earn a spot - in fact, I would start Robinson and bring Roby on. I thought Westwood and Crabtree did well when they came on. A lot of people are slating Brown but when it was 1. Widdop, 6. Brown and 7. Tomkins in the first half it looked OK and with another week under their belt it should be more fluid

For next week, I would go with

Widdop

Briscoe
Shenton
Atkins
Hall

Brown
Tomkins

Graham
Robinson
Morley
Ellis
Burgess
O’loughlin

Roby
Westwood
Crabtree
Fielden

Whats the plan if Shenton goes off after 10 minutes?

Widdop did well at Full back and offered a threat when linking into the line.
Briscoe did OK but needs to look for more work in that type of game, he did save us from defeat with a great tackle at the end
Shenton anonymous again which is becoming all too regular for him when playing internationals
Atkins ran strong but was found out of position once or twice in the 2nd half
Hall offered nothing, seems to have lost pace in the search for size and was poor in defence
Brown looked marginaly off the pace with his distribution being a little laboured thus stunting any flowing moves, terrible kicking game
Tomkins was lively and elusive and offered a genune threat to the opposition, poor kicking game.
Morley ?
Roby did OK and looked strong when taking the ball up, his ditribution from dummy half was pretty good
Griffin ran straight, hard and often and while never looking like breaking through he was hard to put down
Ellis did what he does, ran good lines and was strong in defence excellent workrate
Burgess looked a class above for 20 minutes then dissappered from the game
O'Loughlin ran and tackled all day and did'nt get in the way of the handlers, probably by instruction.

Robinson, did very well in broken play but when he tried to handle he put pressure on his runners leading to mistakes
Westwood was possibly our best forward, ran often, tackled everyhting that moved and mixed it up a bit
Tomkins J. looked out of his depth, put it down to a bad day at the office but he can't afford two performances like that and he will now struggle to make the Test team.
Crabtree was big and strong and made the opposition work extra hard, some good offloads which sparked some of our better moments.

With our forwards being our strength we can't afford to have a dummy half who puts pressure on the ball runner so Robinson goes out for me in favour of Lunt who distributes better and runs more effectively from dummy half.

The only real alternative to Brown is O'Loughlin and that would allow a back three of Ellis, Westwood, Burgess which might be a good idea but I'd stick with Brown for the next game.

J Tomkins played himself out of a spot on the Bench and he should be replaced by either Harrison or one of Fielden/Griffin

Team
Widdop
Briscoe
Shenton
Atkins
Hall (lucky to get a run ahead of Goulding)
Brown (Toyed with the idea of O'Louglin allowing Burgess to play 13)
Tomkins S
Morley
Roby
Graham
Ellis
Westwood
O'Loughlin

Lunt
Burgess
Crabtree
Harrison/Fielden/Griffin (either)

I think thats a fair assessment the Clan

That was a pretty weak Maori side, even with the shuffling around the 2nd half sounded a poor effort against an avg side. I see NZ didn't consider there game "just a warm up game"!

True. it is effectively the Kiwis third string. The samoans would push the Maoris and we know what the Kiwis did to them

Slightly irked we couldn't come away with the win, but happy enough. England were playing a warm up match at the other side of the world, still getting to know each other and experimenting with formations. Maoris were playing their 4N's final. All in all a good work out. First half England did what they needed, played the formations, played the set plays, everything came off without them really trying. Second half everyone went quiet, but that was when people were being swapped around.

Widdop - started well, good vision, good defensive position, great handling, but got roughed up by Toopi and the bottom lip came out, got smashed and then disappeared, which is a worry.
Briscoe and Hall - solid performances both in attack in defense
Atkins and Shenton - solid, nothing more really
S Tomkins - awesome as ever
Brown - first half played really well, great distribution, disappeared in second half
Robinson - added a bit of vigour in attack, but not convinced on defense
Eorl, Griffin, J Tomkins, Roby - all solid, created a great platform
Westwood - Wasn't running as well as hoped, seemed to be taking a hit and then try to run around the defender
Ellis and Burgess - played with what seemed about 50% effort, but still looked awesome
O'Loughlin - lead the pack well in Morley's absence, defense was great
Morley - pleased don't be injured!

I think the best half back combo is Sam and Brown. The team as a whole had more attacking vigour and options with those two and the twocompliment each other; Sam with his off the cuff genius plays off well with Brown's sharp execution of set plays and great distribution.

Overall, shame we didn't win,but it doesn't matter. We had an extremely dominant first half without even trying, got a good work out, good wake up call, got all those niggling mistakes out of the way and had chance to experiment and learn.

Happy.

I said on here that we will miss Sinfield and Eastmond and that Gleeson is a better player than Shenton. Ok, Eastmond is injured but Sinfield should be out there to organise the team as he does best. Gleeson has had an awesome season this year at Wigan but has somehow been missed.

18-0 with Tomkins on the field though, shows just how important he is.

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