Good news, England won a pointless test series.

Bad news, McNamara will still be in the job.

Only in England would there be virtually nothing positive here.

Hardaker, Whitehead, Hall, the entire front row rotation, Roby, Hodgson, O'loughlin have been outstanding, even Bateman has run hard, Smith has kicked well.

That was a top quality test match, in tough conditions and we dominated.

Shocking end to the game, but overall not a bad showing. SOL man of the series... Ok? Smith and Jerry good picks for the last game.

I wonder if all those who absolutely bagged Matty Smith will come here and admit they were wrong after his MoM performance?

how pointless? it's a test series, if thats the case then every game is pointless?

already have.
although i haven't questioned the player more the coaches decision to pick him, but credit to player and coach today.

McNamara interview had undertones of him jacking it in, anyone else get that impression?

well played Matty Smith.
however, all he did was what he does week in week out. simple skills, executed with precision.
we are still missing the spark and creativity.
lots of tries by forwards; no tries from backs (?)
1 solid if unspectacular centre; 1 anonymous centre.
a fairly decent defensive back 3, but nothing in attack at the right end of the field (very good play out of defence though).
exceptional pack once again. we really do miss Sam T for that bit of spark in the back field.
Over the next 2 years we really do need to find a creative half-back and a couple of centres (I'm not convinced that Jack Reed is the answer there either).

so - well done england. a lot better, but more needed.

I wasn't keen on Smith, but yes he played very well today. his long kicking was vital in the 2nd half.

I thought so too, it'll be a "Mutual decision" I reckon.

Just don't give it to Lowes

Kearney is a class act. Did't mention the ref!
England still aren't creative enough for me.They don't seem t have the skill / craft to create tries out wide. Withut that they will always struggle to beat Australia and a full strength NZ.

the list of try scorers in the series says it all

The 50-50s definitely went our way in that second half.

I'll take the win, but I hope it was McNamara's last game in charge, because unless we can work out a way of attacking, and developing offensive players, then it's hard to see how we'd challenge a full strength NZ or Australia.

The absolute top priority for us now is to identify a pair of halves and at least two more centres who can give us options wider than the pack.

credit for the win but you cannot ignore the fact the it is under strength NZ side. McNamara has to leave, would be a bad mistake to keep him on and giving the job to Lowes would be mega silly.

no matter how good Hardaker has been in SL I still think England miss Sam Tomkins at his best. england have to develop some creative HB's for sure though. It is still very predictable!

Much better this week with a scrum-half playing. However, still missing a full-back who can offer himself as a second stand-off and this is a prerequisite at the top level. Hardaker has looked well short of international class in the opposition half in all three games.

Thought the inclusions of McGillvary and Smith were the difference today, both played a vital role, although we never got to see Jerry in full flight tryscoring mode, mostly due to the fact Watkins inside him had a stinker, he ran the ball in like he has every week for years, and got us moving forward.

Smith gave us something we haven't had for the 1st 2 games - a kicking game, very controlled from him and gave us some good platforms to work with.

So i will give Mac some credit and say well done for making those changes !

Some good performances all around I'd say. Fullback slot should be well up in the air now. Down on Hardaker and Tomkins for compete for it, as it should be.

Quite agree, especially McGillvary, massive man, really strong and looked like he was gonna break through the line everytime he went forward. Kiwis had to use 4 men to bring him down, class player!

His ball carrying skills are just unreal. does the hard yards every week in SL!

top top player.

That was a quality game, in front of a full house on live TV. Couldn't ask for more as an RL fan.

As for the performance, England were better in every aspect of the game, apart from the right hand side defense which looked shaky, although with 2 new players on that side probably didn't help.

Looking at next year, I hope we can get a couple more back rowers who can provide some punch out wide, I'd be surprised if Farrell carried the ball a dozen times over the 3 games. Whitehead was good today, and Ferres was good across the series, but it's definitely one of our weakest areas. A possible solution would be to move Flanders into the 2nd row, and playing Sam Burgess at LF.
The halves are still our weakness, Widdop is so so average, he was outplayed by Sinfield before, and Matty Smith, and George Williams in this series. I'm not sure where an international half is going to come from in 12 months.

Indeed. Which is something that many servers of the game were quite capable of seeing, which is why McNamara gets credit for putting him in today, but loses credit for not having put him in the 1st or 2nd tests. McGilvary is an excellent example of how important wingers are to starting sets well with their kick returns.

Likewise Smith. I'm not going to go all go-eyed about his display. His kicking was far superior to anything we'd seen from Widdop or Williams, but I feel a half-back needs to offer more than just a good boot, and I still don't quite understand why Gale (who has a kicking game AND a creative game) was omitted from all three Tests. And again, from the perspective of judging McNamara, if your game plan is going to be a highly conservative one based on kicking for territory and few passing moves, then why wouldn't he include his top kicker from the beginning? It's all a bit odd.

Still, we won, and we don't get to say that very often in international RL, so for now let's enjoy it.

Exciting game, but again a dull gameplan. The one time a forward did something other than ram it up the middle (Graham passing before contact) we scored. Smith kicked well, Widdop disappointed again, our wingers were our best forwards, but the whole McNamara plan relied on good last ditch defence AND NZ being completely clueless on 4th and 5th tackle. If either Johnson OR Foran were playing instead of Hiku the Kiwis would have won by 20+ points, even with Ben Thaler's extremely partial decisions.

To the person who thinks McNamara's interview suggests he's jacking it in, well let's hope so.

The two guys coming in both added plenty. I was really impressed with McGillvary. His workrate was excellent and he was aggressive. I thought Matty Smith offered just what we needed in those conditions and he performed like he's done for us in wet conditions on a number of occasions.

Plenty to work and improve but that group of players are fantastic and there's some excellent players to come in.

Aye I was way off the mark I admit. Watkins was absolutely diabolical today world class my backside! Percival will be first choice England centre for many years to come three years younger than Watkins as well!