England to lose a close one to the kiwis in the semi, then Australia hammer Kiwi's in the final.

problem with Samoa & Tonga is that they'll gas towards the end of games, they'll always start strong but physiologically pacific islanders struggle staying the distance

Australia to beat NZ in the final and England to lose gallantly in the semis, just as it has been for so many years.
However, until a ball is passed or kicked, we can dream.

Do England have any warm up matches or do we just rock up to face Australia first game ?

England play a warm up game in Perth against a WA side. I’m not sure what playing standard the opposition will be.

Samoa beat NSW country under 23s in the first warmup game. Final score was 42 - 26 I think.

The warmup game in Fiji between Aust, PNG and Fiji went;
1st 40 minutes - Aust beat PNG 20 - 4
2nd 40 minutes - PNG beat Fiji 10 - 0
3rd 40 minutes - Aust beat Fiji 18 - 0

PNG and Fiji played first

My prediction? Pain

[urlhttp://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/league-news/fiji-targets-place-in-2019-nsw-cup-after-falling-short-on-latest-bid-20171014-gz0zjg.html[/url

This is disappointing......semi-finalists in the last 2 RLWC's and still no "help' from the NRL?

If we are to get in front of the other code we need to address this.....

Australia (23)
England (24)
France (24)
Lebanon (1)
NZ(21)
Samoa (4)
Scotland (0)
Tonga (2)
Ireland (6)
PNG (20)
Wales (10)
Fiji (6)
Italy (2)
USA (14)

47% of players are playing for the country of their birth. Remove the 5 nations that have full-time professional clubs (AU/ENG/NZ/PNG/FR) and this becomes 45 players out of 9 squads....or 20%.
I predict that unless we get more coaches like Mac at the USA prepared to bring home grown players to the tournament, then we'll see more games between Austraia B v New Zealand B masquerading as Pacific Island nations....

Don't get me wrong.....I am soooooo looking forward to Tonga v NZ, Samoa v NZ and other clashes, but we've not moved on 1 jot since 2013 in the terms of developing the game as an international game.....and if the development of the game isn't the point of the RLWC, then what is? a 5 million quid profit last time is hardly a game changer....

Australia vs NZ final with the Aussies winning easily again. Boring.

It'll be great to watch up until that final, barring the games England play in.

Anyone have any listings on what games are on TV and on which channels ?

I think I'm right in saying everything is on Premier. England games, 1 semi and the final on BBC

Quote ="Durham Giant"Anyone have any listings on what games are on TV and on which channels ?'" BBC schedule: www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/41510260 England games live, one semi and final, couple of wales games on radio and doing a highlights show. All games live on Premier Sports, I'm guessing they will put some of them on Freesports as well.

Quote ="Durham Giant"Anyone have any listings on what games are on TV and on which channels ?'" BBC schedule: www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/41510260 England games live, one semi and final, couple of wales games on radio and doing a highlights show. All games live on Premier Sports, I'm guessing they will put some of them on Freesports as well.

Is there a RL World Cup wall chart that we can download and full in?

Wayne Bennet predicts a narrow loss to Australia- what an inspiring message to the nation.

The way we've performed previously, I think that's the best we can hope for.

He actually said “We're not worried about the result, the emphasis will be on how we play and what we can manage against them, making sure we're competitive all night," he said.

Obviously a win would be the best result, but the result of the opening game will not decide who wins the tournament.

Welll Scotland (albeit missing a few) just got whalloped by Country Rugby League Under 23's - so they might not be in the comp very long!

[urlhttps://www.oddschecker.com/rugby-league/world-cup/rugby-league-world-cup/winner[/url
Bookies seem pretty convinced that the Aussies will win this tournament.....these odds are staggering, but I might be tempted to throw a cheeky tenner on Tonga

Country under 23s is a very strong side and gave a full strength Samoa side a good workout last week.
The country divisional championship this year was changed from open age to under 23s and it was dominated by Newcastle, Illawarra and Canberra based sides, who were all stacked with kids who had come through the junior systems of the Knights, Saints and Raiders - most having played up to reserve grade level in the last year or so.
A good example is 18/19 year old halfback Brendan O'Hagan - three years ago he led the Knights to an under 16s national title and played for NSW against qld - and next year he will be playing either under 20s or reserve grade for an NRL side.
Plenty of these guys used these games against Samoa and Scotland to show NRL sides that they still have plenty to offer.

It would be quicker throwing it in the bin, Tonga are totally over-hyped, their spine is woeful.

[urlhttp://www.rlwc2017.com/sites/default/files/OfficialDrawPoster.pdf[/url

From the worst sports website I've ever seen. See how long it takes to find the groups and tournament structure on the official website. Even the fixtures don't tell you which group a specific game is from. Appalling.

Even though it's not the clearest tournament poster I've seen, it'll do, cheers.

Hope you didn’t put money on that.