Continuous casual racism by the commentators, constantly referring to England as “the Poms” yoy would not teger to a Jamaican team as the N***s or An Indian team as the W*gs but then again its Australia would expect no less than that backwards bigoted nation.

Austin and the likes can f**k off they are not English or British and do not want to know, playing for an off season bonus. Utter crap.

Lack of skills in the England side

As the Australians are not interested in international RL all the home nations should have boycotted the tournament anyway. Send out a message to arrogant ARL they are/gave ruined internatiobal RL so why should we only play when it suits them.

I don't get why we went so big. We seemed to try to play one-up rugby which is never going to be effective in that format, especially if you don't offload. You know you're knackered in 9s when you're using Williams to take in a hit-up straight at the kiwi line.

I thought Tomkins looked our best halfback, can't see what Austin brings ahead of him based on that tournament. I backed the selection of McGillvary but he's looked well off the pace, struggling with basic things like knocking a ball dead, and coming back inside when the ball carrier runs him out of space.

Great day one for the men and women no so much today.

Lacked genuine pace in the men’s side. Hall and McGilvery great in the 13 a side game but not speedsters anymore.

Would like to have seen Gildart, Liam Marshall, Makinson or Charnley in that format

4 props
2 oversize wingers
3 halfbacks

Swapped a prop for a halfback mid way....

Not a pacey 3/4 in sight.
What was the coach staff thinking?

Well Chris Kendall just pretty much gave the title to Australia with a terrible call there. No idea how they gave that try, I could tell in real time Feldt lost the ball.

Spot on, Bennett has been very naive with this 9s comp.

We played Test Match cricket in a 20/20 match.

Why pick props? Then pick 3 and 3 halfbacks and 2noversize wingers who are out of form and slow?

Ridiculous in my opinion, we should have played a normal team without a 6, without the props and the 13. We should have thrown it around more and kept the ball alive but we seemed to want to play the percentages and the game was over before they had chance to do anything. The worst part is we had zero speed, does Bennett watch Superleague? By the his squad picks I doubt he does.

Theres umpteen players in Superleague who would have done well in 9s but not so well in the 13 a side 80 game.

Players with speed like Liam Marshall, Oliver Gildart, Dan Sarginson, Mark Percival, Tommy Makinson, Adam Swift, Josh Charley, Nial Evalds, Josh Griffin, Jake Bibby, Stefan Ratchford, Brad Dwyer, Mike McMeekin, Joel Tomkins, Ryan Hampshire, Johnny Lomax, Joe Burgess, Zak Hardaker, Jamie Shaul, Jack Walker, Danny Kirkmond,

Yep. The only reason I can think of for going with the team he has is he’s going to use most of them in the test series and is using the 9’s as warm up

Pom isn't a derogatory term. It is equivalent to you saying Aussie - which we don't have any problem with.
In fact, my father was born in Cambridge, and my nickname for many years was little pom, because my father was big pom - and it never even occurred to me to be insulted by that.

Or it’s a cost saving exercise.

Offensive or not, it's not the same as calling you guys Aussies. That would surely be calling us Brits? Pom is rhyming slang for immigrant isnt it?

Good to see he's exporting his undoubted skills down under, after trashing Salford at OT.

Property Of (his/her) Majesty.....deported convicts.

Samuel Tomkins, formerly of Wigan Warriors, now with the Catalans Dragons, was the star of the England side, and showed why he is one of the greatest open field attacking players that England has ever produced. Only the immortal Roger Millward comes to mind as a better attacking half. What a pity that Australians and New Zealanders did not see the best of him during his injury hampered NRL years.

Samuel Tomkins is truly sublime in attack, and worth every euro that M. Guasch paid for his services.

Great post! Until I saw kirkmond mentioned mind

I had to throw another Yarkshire player in for appeasement purposes. He was the only one off the top of my head and I based it on previous seasons.

I just want to know wtf Kirkmond is.

He plays in the same team as Burrows, Maguire, Seinfeld, McGilivray & Johnson and is coached by Wain.

It's actually a shortened version of Pomegranate, which is believed to have been an Australian attempt at Rhyming Slang and also because pale skin immigrants turned the same colour as said fruit when out in the sun for too long.

It is not either Property of Mother England nor Prisoner of Mother England, and is accepted as non-offensive in Australia (which is not to say it isn't)

Aussie, same as Paddy, Sweaty, Taffy & Kiwi are all common names for 'stralias, Irish, Scottish, Welsh or New Zealanders. Only the Astralians refer to Brits as Poms, whilst Kiwis refer to them as Pakeha

How bad were hall and mcgillvary?

Tomkins was the only one who looked half interested for England

I have no idea where the word pom comes from, and no one else does either.
All I know is that no one uses it as an insult, and if you take it as an insult, that's your problem, and we really don't care if you choose to be like that.

They call us Poms, we call them convicts, did anyway on the Ashes tours I've been on. Didn't tend to come up while living out there with relatives for some reason.

The player of the Nines World Cup tournament was Australia's Mitchell Moses who is of Lebanese descent. He just pipped the Kiwi Shaun Johnson, who is partly of Laotian descent (his mother). The third best player was Samuel Tomkins, who is pure English. It shows that the game has a truly cosmopolitan pedigree and we need to take advantage of that by bringing the game to foreign shores as soon as possible. Rugby Union does that, and that is why it is thriving around the world, and stealing our best players.