As I alluded to earlier, I genuinely believe England could be knocked off their perch by one of the Pacific nations - I could see them being knocked out of the World Cup at the expense of a Samoa/Tonga. Would be a disaster for England, but a real leg up for international RL.

Paid my three quid, looking forward to it!

I think we will be fine come the WC should we have no serious injuries to key men, our first choice 17 looks pretty good. We will miss Widdop for this test against Samoa the form he is in. and would have been nice to see him get game time alongside Gale, with it likely to be the WC half back partnership. It wouldn't be a huge shock to see us lose this test though, Samoa have a good squad that could compete well with all three major nations on any given day.

For any of the Australian based posters, is the England game being shown live on Aussie TV?

Have you got a 49p off discount code?

I would imagine all the internationals are. Every NRL game is on tv and there is no NRL this weekend so they will have plenty of schedules to fill.

Yes, on Fox League

I dont go for this.
We are well behind Aussie but, not so far away from NZ.
Freak results happen in sport (Scotland v NZ being a good example) but, I would expect some progress this season.
Bennett is a proven winner and we will be there or thereabouts when it matters.
(I'm not expecting us to win the final though)

Samoa and Tonga look the strongest they've ever been. One of them could well turn over England or New Zealand.

If Fiji is at full strength, and Jarryd Hayne chooses to play for Fiji (which he should, because his father was born in Fiji, and he opted for Fiji in the Olympic 7s rugby union) then Fiji will surely be 3rd or 4th in the WC.

I'm not sure how England being beaten by Samoa or whoever would boost international RL. The biggest boost the game could get by far is England beating Australia when it counts - that would get the attention of everyone, even here in Oz where most people regard internationals as a waste of time even given NZ's pretty good record against them in recent years.

100% this. I think for Australia to care about IRL - it needs to be put under threat as the leader of IRL on a consistent basis.

Got to hand it to Mal Meninga for doing all he can to try to restore some pride and passion into the cause. Bad news is that they've still been the team to beat even with everyone involved only half-arsing it.

Dammit, i can't find it on mobdro

What, in the same way that Italy beating England in a 2013 RLWC warm up game saw RL take off massively in Italy ?

[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/39804623team announced[/url heighington and mcqueen both in the 17. no place for arguably 2 of the form players in superleague, taylor and percival

NRL will be picked over SL everytime. NRL players play at a high intensity on a weekly basis SL players don't.

It's two average Aussies over two of our own

Chuffed for McMeeken fully deserved

Form SL Centre not picked.
From SL Full Back picked at Centre.
2 Aussie's on the bench
Scott Taylor not in the 17

Very odd.

So Liam Farrell and Scott Taylor sit the game out whilst two aussies, one of them 35 years old, get a run out? Terrible decision.

Liam Farrell isn't even in the squad. The 3 missing out are Warmsley, Percival and Taylor.

i find it odd that hardaker has been moved to centre - albeit a position he has played in before - from his usual position of fullback this season, especially when he could have put percival there and played zak at fb and put ratchford to non playing squad member, given that ratchford was a late addition to the squad. i'm not going to be too critical with the backs selection until the game pans out though, as the injury to widdop has probably thrown a big spanner in the works.

So being average in the NRL is better than being outstanding in super league?
Do we need to tell Bennet about the long list of average Aussies who have come to SL and completely flopped? (as I am sure Heighington would do)

Also Hardaker is a terrible centre, he never knows what to do, the fact he is playing Ratchford tells me 2 things:
that Bennet was going to play Widdop at fullback despite being the form 6 in the NRL
and that he clearly hasnt been watching SL to see how much Hardaker has improved his passing

Don't have a problem with this, if it'll answer a question of "Will this 35 yr old do a particular role at this years RLWC?"

McNamara would've been crucified for a team selection like that