A game of two halves. I would love us to beat NZ next week so that we could have another crack at them. Let's hope the French give the Kiwis the Swine Flue for next week.

Tomkins is awesome!

Did Morley get injured? Seemed like he was non-existant second half...

There's no point in playing after the game is lost. It's meaningless. So, I'm not getting carried away.

Lockyer sounds like Patty and Selma

If only we hadn't played Tom Briscoe!
It would have been a walk over!

well done england in 2nd half. i think they can beat the kiwis next week if they cut the errors out. tomkins and eastmond must both play!

Take that momentum into next week though and i think we will win!
the ball was just sticking and they started working as a team. they seemed to know what each other was doing.

garbage first half.. maguire and smith terrible

encouraged by second half though, looking forward to next week now!!

crabtree and tompkins should keep there places next week

Agree 100%

England can afford to chuck the ball about when they've been panned, and the opposition allow it. It's a different ball game when the result actually matters...

Dear me

The aussies never got out of 1st gear in that 2nd half

Indeed. BBC will no doubt draw the positives in the post match forum. But we've been here before. Like pulling teeth out.

I'm actually pleased with the end result. Aussies dropped off maybe but our team is poor and we have respect, far more respect than last year.

McGuire had a shocker, I don't understand the flack Sinfield is getting as he was one of Englands best today!

Burgess great talent., needs to learn to stop dropping the ball though.

Crabtree looked pretty good. as did Eastmond and Tomkins who went well in the second half.

Peacock should not be captain and shouldn;t be playing second row, IMO if Sinfields in the side he should be captain as you need your captain on the bloody field for as much of the 80 as possible.

That's their fault is it not ?

It is,but it puts our 2nd half performance in perspective.

)

When it switched to Tomkins & Eastmond in the halves and Ellis at centre we just looked miles more comfortable and actually caused them problems

Smith could do worse than to go with that next week with Burgess, Westwood (he'll have one Wire in there) & Sinfield in the back row and Graham or Morley on the bench with Crabtree, McGuire & ???. That gives us size with mobility and some impact from the bench - my lack of a 4th subs shows just how much we miss O'Loughlin from our forwards.

Our biggest worry is New Zealand are bigger and tougher than Australia, if they go into the game fired up like last Friday we could find them out of sight again.

If we were only going to comment on our own clubs players I'd go something like:

Sinfield: Great performance, spent much of the second half pulling the strings ans showed Roby how to play hooker with good variety.

Peacock: Fair game, but doesn't have the mobility or pace to play second row. England's best prop and needs to play there.

Smith: Poor in the centre but good finish from the wing. If he is to play next week it should be from fullback or wing.

Hall: Decent game, didn't make many mistakes, but didn't really get any chances either. England's top winger and keeps his jersey for next week.

McGuire: Poor game, maybe trying too hard but poor game none the less. Bench at best next week.

I don't want to get drawn on commenting on other clubs players as it will inevitably become a bitchfest.

What, stopping the mighty Green and Gold from scoring? I agree. I've read pages and pages of how Australia were going to put fifty past England. For me - this puts England's performance into perspective.

agreed. englands man of the match for me, tomkins not far behind.

no one was englands mom,just man of the 2nd half .did they relax or did we just start to play after ht ?

Im just p*ssed off someone didnt hammer Billy Slater, he's like a little child moaning all the time.

As for Thurston, great talent, but behaved like a t*at today.

That's the million pound question, isn't it? Should we be looking forward to next week's game or dreading it?

If it was our performance that did improve and not Australia taking their foot off the pedal, then where did that awful first half performance come from? Were we under prepared? Did we give Australia too much respect? Why was our organisation dire?

Looking at this NZ second half performance on now, I'd better hope the good England turn up for 80 mins on Saturday otherwise were in for a hiding.

The hard evidence proved the harsh reality that Tom Briscoe was way, way out of his depth as an international winger and for anyone to claim that it was a mistake to bring him off at half-time is nothing shirt of pathetic considering the hard evidence of a second-half scoreline of 16-0 is total vindication that it was the correct decision.

Whilst I partially agree that Briscoe "did nothing wrong" and Smith was for the more at fault in terms of defensive positioning, Tom Briscoe does not have the pace to counter long-range threats or neither the agility to turn quick enough to defend short-range kicks which made the Aussie game-plan easy.

In last weeks game against France, Tom Briscoe's lack of agility was exposed when Bosc put a kick through for Pelo and he took an age to turn and it was so obvious to anyone that the Aussie game-plan would be to kick behind Tom Briscoe knowing that by the time he recovered the ball, the defensive line would be smothering him, leaving England on the back foot without any chance of an effective "exit set".

Had Fox played in that position today, whilst he like Tom Briscoe couldn't have done anything about Smith's woeful positioning, the Aussies long range threat is nullified. For instance, where Tom Briscoe was making minimal gain on Inglis, Fox would have cut him down.

I think today's game proved that English players aren't all that bad as they are made out to be with Crabtree proving his worth (to many on this site who said he wouldn't) and also big raps to Westwood who proved me wrong.

If England are to win the final (should they beat NZ) then they have to nullify the the Aussies long-range threat, and if they are to do that properly, then Fox [ihas[/i to play.

The sad thing is, many FC fans would have been happy to leave Tom Briscoe on the pitch and see us get annihilated by 60+ just to save face.

Drivel!

So how was it Briscoe's fault Smith was out of position for every Aussie try then?

Pathetic KR troll just whinging because Fox didn't get picked



He bumped into Shenton & Ellis on that play so it isn't exactly is fault is it you tool?



Just shut up, Fox is crap he can't tackle or catch.



No he doesn't because Fox is below average and a liability.