It wasn't the strongest NZ team England have played, but England were also missing Watkins, Gale, Williams, George Burgess, Currie, McMeekan and Hodgson, injuries are no excuse

This isn't intended as a dig, but it be intrigued to know which 7 players that played tonight would be replaced by the 7 you have named?

Enjoyed that. My takeaways

This should be SOLs last game for England, too fast a game for him.

Conor shows what he can do when focusing on playing rugby

Makinson proves he’s the most underrated player in SL.

We need to find a right centre.

We have some great great players - whitehead, Roby, Graham all great.

Looking forward to the tri-series.

Bateman could play there. Ben Currie can play at Loose if he ever gets himself fit. Bennett clearly likes him as he played more minutes for England last season than he did for Wire. Stevie Ward can play Loose if he ever... see a theme? You can also play Sam Burgess there and put Bateman in second row.

Bateman isn’t a centre and is wasted at centre. He’s a cracking backrower.

Connor was good, should have that SO spot now.

Makinson and Charnley as well as McGillvary on the right wing shows how good we are there.

At right centre you could play Watkins Makinson or Charnley all have centre attributes (or play centre)

I’d like to see Clark in the squad in the Autumn, he’s been Wire’s best player this season as well as Ratchford. Give Roby a rest or have both of them on late in second “stanzas”.

Ratchford was okay at FB last night, very elusive and came into the line well. Just didn’t find the passes too well. He’s been class this season though so give him another shot and I think he could make that his own too.

Everyone else did their jobs well, Sam and Graham took some carries in didn’t they?

Percival is a cracking player but at that level is very weak. Gets thrown around like a rag doll a bit and was flying into their defensive line but stopping dead into the tackles (Bateman is the same when he plays at centre for England but then bizarrely when he’s in the back row or like last night at dummy half he doesn’t - is it something to do with the pace of the runs at centre?). I’ve seen more leg muscles on a teenager. Needs to get more calories in him and heavier weights in the gym.

Top game though that and really enjoyed it. 19320 in attendance, that’s more than all but Odsall, the DW and the KCom hold and you wouldn’t have got much more at those grounds. And you wouldn’t have got that many in NZ. So a success all round!

Add George Burgess, Daryl Clark and Kallum Watkins to our 17 and you’re talking a cracking series ahead in the Autumn.

The Kiwis, after the WC and last night, will be well up for the series to get their pride back.

Will be great

International RL is on the up!

I’d aim for a mid-season series for future years. Get Tonga Samoa Fiji and PNG involved. Don’t all have to play each other but have a Magic Weekend style day in Denver:
Game 1 - Fiji v PNG
Game 2 - Tonga v Samoa
Game 3 - England v Kiwis

The next year, the winners and losers move up and down so:
Game 1 - Samoa v PNG
Game 2 - Fiji v Kiwis
Game 3 - England v Tonga

And rotate like that every year.

Denver is 7000 miles from Auckland and 4500 miles from Manchester. So North America is ideal,

Correct

If he isn't at SO Connor would do a good job in the centre's. He's played very well there for Hull. Defends well and has excellent ball skills.

Not sure. I'm not convinced by any of your half backs. they look good when sides let you run about freely but don't really have the skills when the opposition play well and stop the work barba does. If I had a choice of richardson, lomax or farges at Hull, lomax would be my 3rd choice and none of them would get a game in front of sneyd, connor or kelly. You can bleat all you want about how great lomax is but you're wrong. Half decent FB but miles off as a SO

Is a 19k crowd enough to keep this experiment going? Id be tempted to try once more but if there isn't crowd growth next year then pull the plug. RL has been down too many avenues that end up dead ends before.

Considering there is real talk of the NRL taking a game to the the states I don't really see the plug being pulled..

I mean we have the world cup going to the states or do you wanna see that project cancelled?

19k is not a bad crowd. Playing in such a large stadium was the mistake. I mean how many fans do you wanna see in the stadium before calling it a success.

Rugby league was never gonna be able to rock up and get a huge crowd. Basically taking an alien sport to a new destination. We must take that into account and give it time before giving up.

Not sure what people were expecting re Attendance. Was there any promotion of the game over there?

England have had crowds below 19,000 playing in England. Virtually no clubs get 19,000 anymore. We have to take games to the US and Canada.

Why? Why does it matter how many go? Would we have got many more than that if we’d played it at Wigan or Hull? No SL clubs average more than 19000 so should we pull the plug on Super League? How many turned up for England v Australia in Melbourne? How many Kiwis bothered to turn up for NZ’s games in NZ?

Denver’s public have just embarrassed every single rugby league club apart from Brisbane, should we just pull the plug on the sport full stop?

The purpose is to give England more higher level international games, anything else is a sideline issue

I think we need to give the promotional game some respect and especially the stress put on players at 5000 feet and 30 degrees.
On the game itself Wilkin made the right comment that it took England 20 mins to adjust to the climate and the hot start from the kiwis.
For me Whitehead was our best player, Bennett made a great substitution in bringing on Connor and Makinson against a tiring Kiwi defence. Lomax should have been taken off earlier when he got that late whiplash tackle, he missed a crucial tackle 2 sets later.
The conditions effected our players mostly in the pack O’Loughlin, Roby, Hill and Taylor found it tough. Graham was immense similar to Whitehead.
As for the Kiwis they just fell to pieces once they ran out of gas and there offloads were reduced.
It will be interesting to judge the England players on there energy levels in the next super league, luckily no injuries just tired bodies on the plane back home.

I mean if we are gonna pull the plug because a crowd of 19k turned up then boy oh boy the 100 year experiement of an M62 sport should have had the plug pulled years ago

Watkins, Burgess, Currie, Gale, and Hodgson would've definitely been in the 17 IMO. Williams would've been in also if he'd been fit, but I wouldn't have picked him.

Could you imagine if RL were to be a success in the US. All of the star players would disappear over there, the ruling body would soon be American, there'd be numerous rule changes to suit TV advertising requirements etc etc. So, be careful what you wish for.

Nonsense, football has been successful over there.

Yes, but football is a much larger fish than RL. There is no lack of money in the European game and the player pool is big enough to accommodate any US requirements.

Rugby League in the UK would be a sitting duck, the game here doesn’t, have much value or stature unless mushy peas is a top brand in the USA.

So you don’t want to take the game to the USA and Canada because you’re worried they will be better than us in the future, talk about a small town attitude.

It's not small town to consider the possibility that there would fewer and fewer RL clubs to watch and support in this country if we're not careful.

Football started in this country but is now a global sport, has that resulted in fewer football clubs in this country?

Rugby Union also started in this country but is now played across many countries, has this led to a decline in Rugby Union in this country?

And did those two sports spend their time trying to shoe horn in foreign teams (outside of the UK) into their domestic leagues at the expense of established clubs?

Yes Rugby Union created the Pro 12 league with teams from Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Italy. Obviously when the league was created teams in the top flight Irish, Scottish and Welsh leagues missed out on getting into the Pro 12 league.

The Super 15’s league was expanded to include teams from Aus, NZ, South Africa, Argentina and Japan. Other NZ or Aus teams could have been added instead of teams from Argentina and Japan.