I'm not sure we were rubbish we are just England, what I mean by that is I've lost count of the number of times England or GB have won the opening test which surprisingly basically guarantees the next two sell out. Only to lose the second and get destroyed in the third. (call me a cynic "maybe I am but I've seen it all before"icon_wink.gif.

I purposely watched the body language of the Kiwi's after last weeks performance and TBH they didn't look to bothered to me.

Worst game of RL I've ever been to. It made a poor game of union look exciting.

No line speed or depth in attack. We may have a great pack but the took the ball standing still.

Even when we tried to move the ball wide our timing was all out and passes were awful.

No dummy runners no decoys no idea.

Worst game of RL I've ever been to. It made a poor game of union look exciting.

No line speed or depth in attack. We may have a great pack but the took the ball standing still.

Even when we tried to move the ball wide our timing was all out and passes were awful.

No dummy runners no decoys no idea.

Some of us said McBanana was a mistake when he was first appointed.

I remembered being attacked for calling him Mcbanana by one of the posters talking about how shambolic England were today.

McBanana is a crap coach and always has been .

Yet it still seems the English RL cannot get their heads around this.

This is a woeful NZ team shorn of half it's first teamers and yet we still cannot win.

Their should be wholesale changes for next week.

Gale and Cudjoe in and probably McGilvray.

I would be unsure about him under the high ball but NZ dont have a good kicker so less of a problem than it might be.

The team needs a bit of a buzz and some fresh players might be needed.
I would drop Hodgson as well.

Agree we should pick the best we have in every position. Maguire should be there with Widdop (one of the best halfbacks in the NRL) Gale as backup & williams around the squad for the experiance. Magilvary is up the top of the try scoring & should be played outside Cudjoe. John Bateman is not a centre he could cover if a centre is taken off during the game. I think he will be a terrific international second row in a couple of seasons but at the moment we have better. I have allways thought it a mistake to pick players out of position. I am a fan of Josh Hodgson but I would start with Roby & bring josh on to spell him but off the bench he can cover loose forward or second row at a push if injuries occour allowing three big forwards on the bench as well.

My picks for worst player were Williams who didn't seem to be able to actually hold onto the ball and Bateman who just didn't seem to have any strength, clattered into tackles and was floored immediately with no progress made.

It's ironic that mcguire used to be selected all the time when he was less of a complete standoff and more of a runner, then in his twlight years when he has honed his skills and become a real chief and creator, he is nowhere near the set up.

I'm not sure it was down to individuals we just had no structure in attack. We could have had Thurston in there and been almost as bad.

We badly missed an attacking link player, but then again there were no runners anyway. Absolutely awful attacking structure.

Maybe the stint in defence took it out of them.

I think you have a fair point about Englands extra effort in defence, on reflection I think someone like gale playing what he see's in front of him might be the best option, Widdop holds the team in position & directs well but he will not have that unexpected play in his bag or a speculative off the cuff play, Williams I am sure has that but he needs time to grow in confidence at this level to be able to fight his corner with the coach. An example today was Roby quiet rightly putting a kick through into space but no other player on the side was quick thinking enough to realise what he had done. Maybe it was fatigue after defending or they are coached to play a ridgid pattern with no room for flair?

What's Gale's passing game like?

Maybe people should look at why we had to do so much defence not use it as an excuse for a poor performance. Lucky NZs halves were terrible in the first half. If SJ was playing the game would have been finished in the first half

Pretty good.

If he's alongside Widdop I hope he doesn't, tbh.

We are playing the simplest RL game plan possible, if not one up then its a drop off from first receiver. Thats it, thats our plan. NZ can pack the middle and shoot up because can't and wont get it wide quickly. Its a game plan the rests on the other team playing poorly.

We have probably the most gifted british centre to come through this Millennium and a speedy, exciting young winger outside him and they havent been given the ball in any kind of space in 160mins.

We have one of the biggest, strongest wingers in the world on the other side who is virtually unstoppable near to the line playing outside two second rowers who are great defensively but limited going forward.

This isnt a talent issue, its a tactical one. To not score is unacceptable and we didnt even look like scoring, the lack of creativity was startling. This wasnt a case of players not having the tools to execute, its about a game plan that left them nothing to execute.

And lets not pretend we are building something here. Only Burgess and Williams are under 21, and Bateman 22. We have as many players 29 and over as we do 23 and under.

And lets not pretend that this is an accurate reflection of the quality of the English players, this isnt a case that we just arent good enough to expect to be beating Australia and NZ, McNamara's England have lost against Italy, struggled to beat Samoa, and lost to the exiles.

Luke Gale isnt the answer and McGilvery or Burgess, Cudjoe or Bateman arent taking us up a level. McNamara has to go. Being held scoreless is just unacceptable. But win or lose next week, England RL need to be looking at why we dont have a stand out half, why we dont have 2 centres demanding a shirt and why there arent 5 more behind them knocking on the door, where are our ball playing second rowers. What are we doing to mitigate our weaknesses? We have some, and we have places we need better players, but we also arent getting the best out of the great players we do know we do have,

Biggest disappointments for me have been Hodgson and Graham.

It was almost like they were playing not to lose. There was zero idea in attack, dull one up rugby that was as predictable as it was boring. Not sure what he's coaching our half backs, but they showed no creative spark whatsoever. We could have played for another hour and still not scored...

You can bet if Johnson had been playing today NZ would have won at a canter...

Just got home. That wasn't much fun at all. I don't remember anyone saying after last week that Williams wasn't international class, but suddenly he isn't? He's a young lad still learning his craft but has a lot of talent and a bright future in front of him. I'd certainly keep him in the side to play in front of the Wigan fans at the DW next week. Whether Widdop, who was equally poor, should be alongside him is another question. I can see the argument for playing Matty Smith alongside his club team-mate next week, even though Smith has had a generally very poor season, as even Wigan fans admit. But he'd surely improve our kicking game on what we saw today. I think I'd be content with Smith/Williams or Gale/Williams. But as others have rightly said, it's fundamentally more about tactics than individuals. We have two world-class wingers, and they're not getting the ball.

Regardless of personnel, our game plan was so simple it was far too easy to defend against.

I thought last year and in the World Cup we played with some creativity . We seem to have gone backwards big time.

You can only blame the coaches not the players.

It certainly is the coaching, it seems. Wigan scored a few tries this season with Williams making those short-range diagonal kicks for Joe Burgess. Did we see anything like that? Did we hell! I'm sure Hardaker and Hall, say, have some pet plays too.

Just back from that pathetic spectacle. One very poor team (NZ_ against one abysmal one. The highlight of the match that roused the crowd from their slumber was about 70 minutes in when a goal kick was missed. That says it all.

Where do I start? After last weeks' second half I expected us to play tough and hard for 20 minutes and then rip them apart. But after a few minutes we took a goal kick from 10 yards out and we knew then the coach had no belief and we may as well go home. We stuck it out as spectators but why? It just got worse. What the game plan - give it to James Graham and let him take it up whilst the rest engaged in some sort of unfunny slapstick routine of falling over and knocking on? Why didn't NZ keep falling over?

I have seen some bad RL games and inept performances in well over 50 years of watching the game but that was without a shadw of doubt the WORST performance I have seen - simply because it lacked the fundamentals of rugby league. No heart. No running in hard. Utter, utter crap. I was absolutely disgusted. In fact despite the close score line I wanted to leave early (but stuck it out) and didn't ever care whether we won (for the first time in my life).

I had lost interest by half time by which time aside from Graham and perhaps Hardaker I didn't see anyone warranting an international shirt. Surely the worst half back performance (and we've seen some shockers over the years) in British international history? Williams - out of his depth. Widdop - dire. His kicking game was shocking and that was his best aspect!

We lost via the softest of soft tries ever. We were still in the dressing room even though half-time had been and gone.

No atmosphere as nothing to cheer about.

Rugby league had a good opportunity today - after the Burgess publicity, the dire RUWC, a good win last week, being in the capital in front of the men of the press and guess what - we blew it. So many times the players of this great game have come good against the odds. Today was the complete opposite.

Back to the game plan - was there one? Was it to trundle up the middle as slow as we could and then make the opposition laugh by falling over or throwing the ball to them? Were was the desire? The guts? The drive? Where in fact was rugby league today?

Disgusted.

#Wallof sh*te

Worst performance since Melbourne 2008, another hopeless England game when it matters, we won't get all the free publicity from Rugby union next year and this shambles will be in the memory as a reason why people shouldn't give the game another chance. Why did we book the Olympic stadium to serve up that shower of drivel? The game was characterised by too many penalties, one try, scrums that took an age to form as both packs sat around and had a rest and constant one man drives up the middle. They already have that kind of Rugby down south! Not sure what video refs have against England, looked a try in the ground and it would have added some kind of spectacle to the end of a dire game.

The coach should be fired for considering that game plan last week, let alone repeating it this week on the grander scale. We got lucky last week and it was clear both half backs were ineffective and we had no kicking game, they were worse this week. The whole team looked terrible, even the forwards that played a solid game were lacking the skills they have shown in the past.

The match day squad is missing a centre, how can an international coach decide he doesn't need two centres, oh right because the game plan is never pass it outside the pack. We need two centres, you can swap both starting second rows out for me at the same time. Gale must be given a chance next week, McGuire should have been in the squad for his big game experience. Use the strengths in the squad, have the new coach pick a squad that he has confidence in and that can cover a number of options next time!

In 2013 and 2014 we put in some great performances. We were so close to the final, then we learned from that to effectively beat the Australians in their own back yard and pushed the Kiwis all the way a week later. This year the game plan has gone backwards and the players appear to have forgotten how to catch, pass or kick the ball. Let's play the real attractive rugby league we want to see, and then at least we get some entertainment, if not the win.

Couldn't agree more!

If I hadn't taken the wife out for dinner and calmed down by the time I wrote that I would have been more blunt!

So utterly predictable that I posted this last week :

Re: Do you change the team?

Pretty sure that unless injuries occured, we'll keep the same team, and same gameplan, then when it doesn't work, we'll say that the halfbacks are no good and scratch heads for a "Plan B" for the final game.
shinymcshine • Mon Nov 02, 2015 3:23 pm •

I thought it was another iffy performance from England.

I wasn't impressed with us last week really but I thought we overpowered them and I don't think they were expecting that. This week they was.

Another good showing from Graham, Hill and Burgess but I don't think any of the others performed anywhere near the level expected. I think when so many players underperform you have to look at the coach. A group that includes the current man of steel.

I would put it down to the conditions but we played a similar way last week.

Williams and Widdop were awful. They are playing so far away from the line and their kicking was so poor. I blame them for isolating Hardaker and how little ball Watkins is getting but the blame has to be shared with the coach. Because they aren't playing at the line Hardaker doesn't have the space he needs. I don't think they compliment each other either and for that reason I would bring Gale in next week. Gale will play at the line and bring a kicking game that we need.

On the positive side our defence was superb and our front row were dominant and aggressive. I also like how Roby and Hodgson rotate.

Widdop has no idea. First half he threw a poor long ball to Hall when all he needed do was take one step to straighten it up and pass to the man outside him would have then created an easy try scoring position.