can someone tell me were full time rugby has inproved our game at international level as i beleive that was one reason for a super leauge i have dvds of test matches in the 70s and 80s were games with aus were a lot closer and players played witgh a bit of passion my own opinion is our national game is no better now than it was 20 yrs ago

Think the second half answered some of those points!

when the Aussies dropped down to third gear and Ganson put us back in the game by letting us play offside and caned them with penalties

The Super League era has improved most physical aspects of the national game but unfortunately the Southern hemisphere have shown more improvement.
The main drawback of Super League is that it is removing flair players from the game in favour of bulked up chargers. I used to watch every SL game but now I pick and choose. There is only so much five drives and a kick I can stand.

If those are the best Eglish wingers n centres in SL well i,ll be doggone
and D Mguire stand off hes has bad as L Price BOBBINS !!!

Maybe being pedantic here but if we weren't full time then the difference today could have been 100. The Aussies have stretched the gap though. They have players like Inglis, Slater and Lockyer and we have no-one that's on their level. Inglis is almost super-human. He's got to be the best player on the planet at the moment IMO.

Today was clearly a game of two halves. First half was dreadful. Our defence on the right hand side was shocking and cannot be excused at Test level. Their kicking game is light years ahead of ours yet again. Every kick went down the middle of our winger and full back, and turned them around. Our kicks just seemed to go in a general direction and eventually found Billy Slater. Their kicking was so precise, they could probably land it on a five-pence piece. The 'Roos had a territorial advantage after the first two sets of six! Inglis showed that nobody on our team could individually keep tabs on him and did most of the damage in the first 40 minutes.

Second half was a much better effort, but you have to ask how much Australia took their foot off the gas? Our kicking was much improved, and we finally put Billy Slater under some pressure. For me, we've got to be doing this from the off in our remaining game(s). If we're going to kick for territory then we need to be doing it earlier in the tackle count to turn their impact players around and minimise the yardage they make on their kick returns.

Tomkins and Eastmond looked like they were capable of producing something and I'd like to see them start from now on. We may have nobody capable of matching Inglis but at least these two caused a bit of uncertainty in their defensive line.

Playing the Kangaroos and the Kiwis requires 100% effort and concentration in every tackle for 80 minutes. At the moment we look incapable of doing that. We start flat and we're prone to errors. I almost think the England team could do with a bust-up in the dressing room before the game to get them fired up from the off! They need to get in their faces from the first tackle to the last, they need to pressure the full backs at every opportunity, and they need to blitz Inglis everytime he gets the ball. If they can do the above they may find themselves in a game in the final quarter rather than playing for pride.

just think the game as gone soft now i dont agree with dirty play but we used to rough the aussies up a bit and let thrm know they were in a game i never saw as much grabing at shirts as i did today

Bring back the Biff!

Teams in Super League concentrate on beefing themsleves up and trying to get the perfect physique while Aussie teams get on the field and practice with ball in hand for hours.


The results are for all to see.

Drop McGuire will help for starters.......not up to it at international level IMO. Start with Tomkins and Eastmond, with Myler on the bench.
Wasnt too impressed with Roby at 9 also and think he would be better suited coming off the bench as a impact player with either Moore or even Higham starting at 9.

Thought Tomkins was our MOM TBH....... class act this lad (even for a crust muncher).

Quite frankly I think it,down to the players. Aussies are a lot faster and a lot better at passing.Our passing isn,t zippy enough and a lot of it means players have to wait for the ball to arrive and that means players are invariably stood still waiting a second or two for the ball to arrive. By that time their defence is upon the receiver.

It happens far too often and it,s right across our game. I see it at amateur level I see it in every game I watch.

I have posted before about the standard of passing, and, on here and have actually posted do our coaching staff not have our players practising passing during our training sessions.

We can in the main part compete but this slows our National game down and it really needs to be addressed.

What we do have at National level however is a never give up attitude. Thats the only thing we are better at as a country than any other and in all sports.

It was even clearer when they showed the Aussie tries from behind the post.

Quick hands, dummy runners, and hitting gaps.

Basic rugby played to near perfection.

Yes Frank I must agree on the convicts passing being a lot better than ours...... how many times did the long cut-out passes split us open for them to score out wide, we just didn't seem to do it which annoyed me as its done week in week out at SL level.

The flashy stuff looks good but playing the basics to a top standard will usually win the game for you, and it showed today.

just dont think full time as closed the gap one bit and all we have is a game were the rlf look after the select few why the rest of us are fighting for the scraps

Good to see the 'LEYTHERS ON TOUR' flag on the back of the south stand.

Was the North Stand actually, but it helps to have connections





Thought Eorl Crabtree was absolutely immense today, really took it to the Ockers and definitely deserves a starting spot next week.

From what I saw today Ingles is a good player but not super human. All their tries were scored with the man getting the ball in space to run. We were slow in attack and slow indefence. We attack in bunches and flat and we defended in bunches and not flat. I mean not in a line by that.
Their kicking game was good because we never pressured the kicker at all. Our kickers were under pressure all the time we had the ball. When we were attacking there was four men in their tackles and then there was enough out wide to take the backs. When we were defending there was three men in the tackle then when they threw the ball out wide it was four men to our two defenders and they scored every time. I know they scored off two mistakes but there were men on the field who were not upto the job. We never hardly met them at the line of scrumage and they were making easy yards all the time. I didn't watch the second half because it was a loss at half time. It looks like the name "Stupor League " really does fit. We either have a team of bad players who can't be d or a coach who can't motivate or is tactically useless. I dont't know which but we are light years behind the Aussies. I predict we will have to suffer this for at least 15 years if the RFLs expansion program is to bring the so called bonuses that they have us believe are going to happen. By that time you will be lucky to get ten thousand on to watch a England - Aussie game. I'm dying to hear the RFLs comments on todays game.

what utter rubbish...look at the results against aus before super league.

its not the fault of super league they are simply a stronger rugby nation.

we were getting thrashed long before super league

you have your opinion and i have mine full timr rugby has not done a thing to inprove our game and sorry the results are just the same now so were as full time helped us except look after the top few clubs at leas in the past we had players who spit blood for the shirt they wore

We,ll never get any better if we do that.
Giving up gets you nowhere imo.We need to look for solutions

Ignoring our problem does not and will not help. Kick and clap suffers from the same but we must look for solutions.

This attitude of throwing in the towel will achieve what ?

Thinking cap time.

We're no nearer now than we were in 82.

super league has been going a few good years now and how many of our young stars are in the nrl.

remember woodys first tour when we got thrashed, remember meninga swotting les dyl off like a fly at boothberry park.

its no more of a worry now than it was in the 70s and 80s . super league its a successful venture and can you say hand on heart we would now be a better team if super league had never formed.

our amateur game does not produce the talent that the equivalent in aus produces.
perhaps we should blame our amateur set up not super league.

what a stupid decision it was accepting 86 million for a minority sport played pre dom in two counties..... i think not.

if leigh were an establihed sl team this forum would have different views