They overachieved v Samoa in the opener, were less than average v France and played well v PNG.
Unfortunately, some players really came up short in the rematch v Samoa.
It looked like the weight of expectation was just a little too much for some, which is a real shame.
However, The Aussies and NZ are on another level compared to England.

Our squad was worse than 2017 overall, so I didn't expect us to win the tournament, or hold our own against the Aussies, but we did have an easier draw this time and crucially, we did not improve as the tournament went on, as we did on the previous 2 tournaments.

Wayne Bennett got the best world cup performances in my time watching the game, so perhaps it is a little unfair to compare the last world cup with this one, but no coach has taken the team from 1 world cup to the next, and there is nothing I can see from Wane, that would justify him being the exception.

The lack of attacking discipline, the drop offs in defence, the players we were carrying were clear in the 4 previous games, so when we came up against a better teams they were exploited, and I don't want a coach who picks players no matter what their form, or who won't motivate a squad to grow and improve performances from week to week.

Clear out the whole coaching roster, and start again.

I can't decide if he did a good job or a terrible one. Ultimately we looked superb in games against weak opposition, then capitulated when we faced the first half decent side we had to play. Any coach would have got us to that point. He is a good coach who will motivate his players and get something near the best out of them. But, he also hamstrung himself picking players who simply had no right being selected. There were several of those and maybe only Hill and Williams justified their selections. The likes of Cooper, Bateman and particularly McIllorum were poor/illogical choices and were poor in the tournament as well.

You'll never get away from that with Wane though. He's Wigan to the core and he sees playing for Wigan or being in the Wigan youth system as being superior than form elsewhere. He's always going to pick the likes of Cooper, McIllorum and Tomkins, even though their performances this season didn't warrant it.

For me he was too safe in his selections. Tomkins has been a fantastic player over the years, but he's not in form and he's lost a lot of his sharpness. Wane should have been more bold and picked Welsby at fullback, his best position. That would have allowed Williams to have an organising half with him. That was particularly necessary because of the ridiculous selection of McIllorum. He was terrible in the World Cup and particularly against Samoa. Lazy distribution, no organisation or planning from acting half and he can't tackle, he must have set a record for missed tackles against Samoa. Leeming or Ackers would have been far better, or even Clarke or McShane with one of those from the bench.

I'm not sure what the international calendar involves going forward now, they've probably not even thought about it. But they need to get rid of the old guard now and focus on younger players. The likes of Tomkins, Hall, McIllorum, Hill, Bateman and Cooper shouldn't be playing for England again.

I'm just not sure if Wane can do that, I'm not sure he's strong enough to do it. He'll probably replace McIllorum with Sam Powell when he retires.

Radders the world cup finalist in!

Absolutely. Samoa were supposed to hammer us in game one and were the bookies favourites.

All of the team did not perform not just the Wigan connected players.
Wane picked the team as he saw fit they didnt perform,Wane didnt drop the ball or give a forward pass or a interception pass or miss tackles the players did that.
Stop blaming individual players it was a team effort.

So if they gave the job to Paul Wellens next year and he went with Aaron Smith at hooker, no fans from other clubs would be calling that out? I suspect they would. That how bizarre a selection McIllorum was.

Wane picked those players, so he's got to take the criticism when it doesn't work out. He took a risk on too many players out of form. Tomkins, Hall, Hill, Cooper, Bateman, McIllorum, Williams, Watkins (As a centre) etc. How many of those were a success? Hill, in that he was better than he usually is in SL and Williams who was excellent. The rest weren't great and didn't justify their selections over better/more in form players.

The Wigan-ness of the squad he picked was always going to be an issue given he's a current employee of Wigan. That was the first mistake, it's not a job you can do well. If he doesn't pick Wigan players for an international he'd be accused of protecting them from injuries, if he does he's accused of bias. He chose to double down on that inevitability and pick players like McIllorum and Cooper and the rest listed above, just bizarre selections.

The final score was close but we were second best from kick off. If Samoa had a better goal kicker and converted their tries we wouldn't have been in a position to square it up.

Conversely, if Makinson, Watkins and Young had scored the tries that they should have done, it would have been an England win.

I like how Cooper is being touted as only selected because he plays for Wigan. He was already in the squad long before Wigan signed him.

Was Welsby a success was Whitehead a success was Tomkins a success was Radley a success was Watkins a success was Young a success they all made mistakes which cost in one way or the other,not all Wigan connected well maybe Tomkins and Welsby.Uptil that game we was playing and winning well so no I dont think it is bizarre the only thing that is bizarre is people like you trying to blame anyone that is Wigan connected unless they play for St Helens.
On a side note if Wellens was the coach and he picked Smith I would bow down to his greater knowledge and if we lost I would not look at playing the blame game.
We lost,you are boring get over it and support the national team.

Had whitehead held on to the ball so we had a kickable drop goal we would all be declaring wane a great coach.

Wane should carry on as coach for me

Seriously need the lasses to pull off a bit of a miracle here or else Saturday is going to be even more cackamallabab than it already is.
Haven't been all that impressed with the Kiwis so far which obviously mean they'll stick sixty on us.

Welsby - No. He will be a great player but he had a poor tournament.

Whitehead was excellent yesterday.

Tomkins has been bang average for a long while and shouldn't have made the squad.

Radley has been very good in the WC. The pass to Crichton was a shocker though.

Watkins should've been in the squad as 2R as he was outstanding for Salford last season playing in that position. He did a good job filling in for Newman but ultimately was found out in the semi as he's lost a yard of pace and his footwork let him down on a couple.of occasions.

The picking of Mcllorum was an absolute disgrace based on his form for Catalans. He's been found out massively in every game and Wane is absolutely culpable for that because he chose him purely on club loyalties.

Welsby should have been playing fullback. He's decent in the halves at Super League level, but most of the stuff he excels at there is the stuff he does from fullback naturally. Cutout passes to the wingers, tip ons and individual running across the field off one of the halfbacks. His kicking game is improving slowly but not a natural part of his game. I think we'd have done a lot better with him at 1 and someone else in the halves.

Agree on the rest, although I think Watkins was injured in the semi final. He seemed to have a real problem and I think that was causing issues. He was struggling to get back the ten in the first quarter of the game.

He picked MM because he wanted aggression in the middle of the park. Having coached him since he was a kid he knew he could trust him.

Was it the right call? Not sure, but MM didn't cost us the game on Saturday.

My point Sale,all them players uptil the semi has had a good tournament they and the rest of the team didnt perform to their respective standard in that semi.
I for one thought Young & Watkins were great as a partnership on that edge but they werent at the races for the semi.
As stated MM didnt lose the semi it was a combination of things.

I did not see any aggressive play from MM, indeed Samoa exposed his lack of fitness so much that even the commentators were asking for him to be given a breather.

I actually thought Tomkins played well and played a good captains role.

Welsby had a bit of a mare, but given he is not the first choice halfback for Saints that is hardly surprising that at international level you can't have a down week.

Watkins was a weird one, looked very decent the first 3 games but just completely switched off in the semi, if he was injured then it was poor of the coaching team to pick him.

Young also had a pretty average game whilst no big errors he made little impact taking the ball forward. Sadly 3 of those were on the same side and got schooled all day long.

The rest of the squad were fine but with such a weak wing they could not hold Samoa out.

Whilst Young had a great tournament. Like you said he had an average SF. However, he made one large error. Dropped a kick when under no pressure which lead to a try. Not blaming him for the SF loss at all but that was a big unforced error.

A combination of things cost us that semi, not one person. However, I would argue that we'd have been at least 2 points better off without MM on the pitch because he offered absolutely nothing other than a few tackles. If he's picked purely on the basis that he can defend then Radley should've started at 9 and Ackers brought on to exploit any tiredness around the ruck.

Quite frankly his inclusion in the squad was one of the worst picks I've seen for a long long time. Is he even in the top 5 or 6 9's eligible for England in SL?

You are quite correct that had slipped my mind. The more I think about it the worse it gets as I'm not sure any of the backs covered themselves in glory.

Makinson ran well most of the match but bombed a sitter at the start of the game, William and Welsby were both a step back from their previous form.

If one of the back line has a better game, then we win. For them all to be off at the same time was maddening.

Let's face it, we pretty much did everything wrong on Saturday and Samoa still only just squeaked past us. A repeat of anything like our PNG performance or the first game against Samoa and I think we win the game with a bit to spare.

The frustrating thing is we know we're good enough to be in that final, we just didn't execute. Would we have beaten the Aussies? Tough call, but I honestly think we'd have got closer than Samoa will (cue Samoans now beating them and me looking rather foolish

).

So there are some big questions to answer for 2025.

Pack - Can we keep big Tom fit and firing for another 3 years and will Walmsley still be going strong by then to add a bit of size to replace the likes of Hill.
Who of the next generation can fill the void left by Whitehead?

What will be the spine options? Tomkins will be long gone, no Lomax, Sneyd, MM (unless Wane still around in which case who knows!

).

Backs - No Hall, Watkins, Makinson (you'd think).

What names are we throwing into the hat? Dodd, Murphy, Gannon.....

Maybe a back 5 of Welsby, Young, Farnworth, Newman, Murphy looks fairly likely based on players I can think of? Anyone else obvious I'm missing?

Looking forward to see how Tyler Dupree develops at Salford. Got size, pace & good hands and think he's got massive potential.

My only gripe with selection was Watkins at centre. This is international rugby league. You cant have a centre whos slower than my dead nan there who also takes 2 weeks to turn around.. He was woefully found out against Samoa. If Percival was playing, we win that game no danger

I almost agree with you there LeBron. KW was one of the form 2nd rows in SL and deserved a squad place in that position. The unfortunate injuries to Percival and Newman meant he was moved into his old position and TBF to him he did an admirable job until the semi. Looks like he was carrying an injury as well so I think he can be cut some slack (although he made a horlicks of the bombed try). And as your mate Konrad found out last season, Tim Lafai is a fair old handful.



The choices at 1,7 & 9 were far more contentious for me and where Wane dropped a major b0ll0ck.

Watkins was concussed very recently and I wonder if that influenced his performance in the semi. He certainly didn't look the same player as in previous games in the tournament.

I think we can all agree that a lot of players made mistakes and taken together that caused the defeat. If any one of those don't happen we win the game. It was a bit of a perfect storm.

I don't have a problem with any of the selections apart from maybe MM at hooker. As has been said already he doesn't really offer any threat from dummy half. I understand the point about his defence maybe being important to take the sting out of the bigger packs but this didn't really work in the semi. Ackers to me looks ok behind a pack that's winning the ruck but not sure about if it's on the back foot. We've gone from having lots of top class options at hooker to virtually none and that's a concern given how fundamental that position is nowadays.

Hopefully the emergency of Dodd, Murphy, Newman, Pryce, Pearce Paul etc will plug some gaps as they mature