Just watched the England Kiwi game and i can honestly say i dont think we will win one game.We looked poor in every department.No idea,no passion and no leadership.

England dont have one world class player,not one player stood out to me.Briscoe and Goulding are not international wingers,Brown should have not even been considers for this tournament.Atkins missed 3 tackle in the run up to the Kiwis second try.

I think we dimiss Englands chances of winning this trophy.

i dont think anybody on here ever gave them a chance in the first place!

Anyone heard how bad or otherwise Atkins' injury is?

Thats a bit tough on Atkins, he missed three tackles coz he was basically trying to tackle the runners on his own. Everybody else just stood there watching. Like you say though, the never even looked like they stood a chance.

Nah mate, he made two powerpuff attempts to tackle by tickling the guys shoulder as he ran past. Then when he finally got his hands on him it was too late and he'd scored.

Shenton was awful

Shenton was awful? Yet you make no reference to Atkins?

Shenton defensively in the first half was lacking, but he made up for it by looking very dangerous in attack in the second half. He was way up the list if you want people to single out.

Widdop, Atkins, Brown and Fielden were all very poor for me. Frodo, Graham, Westwood, Roby, Shenton, Tomkins and Robinson did well enough. Briscoe looks a good enough winger. The rest were anonymous. Who is this Burgess feller we keep hearing about for example? He looks a stone overweight, a yard slower and totally lacking in interest.

the only players to come out of yesterday's debacle with anything approaching international credit would be, err, none of them.

i though gaz ellis and sam burgess were massively disappointing yesterday...they showed probably once or twice each that they are capable but hardly seemed to get involved otherwise

benny westwood i thought had a decent game, made a bad miss and gave a needless penalty away with his first act but provided more go forward than anyone else

england for me lacked any sort of aggression whatsoever in the pack, i thought with peacock and morley missing it would be down to ellis and burgess to front up...lets hope it works a heck of a lot better against australia

How the hell Atkins is anywhere near an england shirt is beyond me. He is absolutely terrible

He's pretty great for Warrington.

Admittedly he was awful yesterday but he was going solo a lot of the time.

shenton in the second half was one of our best players looked dangerous,briscoe did well. think we will see alot more from eliis and burgess they really need to carry our pack. widdop did alright but nothing special one dropped catch. we got to watch our backs as we our going to get overrun like last year against australia especially after there performance against papua new guinae.

don't get why people don't understand why these players play well for there club and not for england as because when they play for england they are against a higher class opposition so they make them look poor.

Abit harsh to pick out one or two players for criticism, when pretty much all of them wernt good enough. I cant really think of anyone who can say they had a good game, there were some ok performers but nothing more.

The general concensus seems to be that England have the forwards to compete, but not the backs. Therefore the question must be: how do we improve the skill levels of our backs? Maybe we should have more 7 a-side comps at junior and under 21s level? Our maybe the kids with the required skills are simply lost to football in this country whereas in Oz and NZ they play rugby. Any thoughts?

Lose and we're out next week?

yes i beleive so

unless

Australia + PNG beat NZ

and we really destroy PNG i think

It's centres + FB I think we're really lacking tbh. We have wingers who can finish and have pace, Briscoe will be one of the wingers for the next 5-10 years and then there's a few others out there who can fill the other spot.

Bridge is a player I like and think he would be in were he available, I just don't rate Atkins for some reason though, I see him as more of a winger playing as a centre than the other way around. He's got enough pace + size to trouble anyone on the wing.

Tomkins
Atkins
Bridge
Gleeson
Briscoe
McGuire/Pryce
Eastmond

Would have been my backline. Halves are ok, but I think (where possible) you want to get a partnership from club level at international level due to the restricted playing time at internationals. Aus have SOO to play together and gel whereas we don't.

You calling for that counties thing back?

Nothing gained with that IMO if we keep up a mid season international. It's more being able to field the same spine of the team year in, year out. Both the Kiwis and Kangaroos have that advantage over us. Only four players from the world cup are playing in the England team this year and last year's team was different from this year. We can't hope to compete if we keep on changing the line up so drastically. Ok, so this year was slightly different in that Eastmond and Sinfield were injured; but even so, we need to solidify our spine so that as a group of players they get to know each other and get confident in playing the opposition.

That wasn't really what I was getting at but again I wouldn't be particularly adverse to that. But with the RFL in charge you know it would be shocking effort and pointless.

I was just meaning that the key figures in the Aus side get to play together on a more regular basis even though they play for different sides.