Peacock will be picked if he continues his current form, those stats are outstanding.
Bridge will not play 13. He's played 3 games there. Even if he was the best player on the pitch in those games, it doesn't qualify him to be played there for England when SOL and Sinfield have played there all their careers and excelled. I would also have Langley ahead of Bridge, and possibly Ben Harrison, though his form hasn't been that good this year.
Charnley is behind another 5 or 6 wingers and will have to be extremely lucky with injuries and coach stupidity to be picked.

Those are my views.

Tomkins
Hall
Bridge/Yeaman
Reed- This man is a beast, glad he chose us over Aus
Briscoe

Id prob opt for Reed and Bridge to be honest, as this is there natural centre position.

As for the wingers debate, I thought i'd check out some stats and had a little geek moment and here are my results

Briscoe + BJB imo.

Looking at overall attacking and defensive ability I would have to go Briscoe and BJB after seeing that. Hall is very good with ball in hand and a great 1 on 1 tackler but as a Leeds fan I know that he loses concentration sometimes and lets his opposite number get on the outside of him, as seen by his tackle efficiency. I added Broughton to the list because he seems to have had a good season from what I have seen and in a year or 2 of 1st grade week in week out his stats should be up there.

going off those stats would have to agree.

Throw up some Centre stats that would be interesting too.

You don't even need the stats though, Briscoe + BJB (along with Charnley) are our best attacking wingers, all 3 can create a break and all have that spark and pace. Unfortunately though, Charnley can't defend. Hopefully he improves that area of his game, or has a season with an actual centre inside of him to see if thats part of the problem.

I've said in all of these threads Briscoe + BJB, but if McNamara wants to play it safe Hall will be in for BJB.

If I have time before work I'll do some centre stats. The winger ones only took me 25 mins or so.

Jeez, NRL stats used to be so accessable. I hope you apreciate what I just did to get half of Jack Reeds stats

I hope you've applied the NRL factor.

If you've forgotten it, you times the Tries/assists/metres/carries/busts/breaks/tackles by 2. And divide penalties/missed tackles and errors by 3.

That gives the true value I believe.

Surely in this case then, as we are playing the NRL players, you should keep his stats the same and half the rest of the SL players positive stats on that list and times the negative stats by 3

Looking at those stats I think Hall should have a place nailed down and then it's a fight out between Briscoe and BJB for the other side.

Charnley stacks up very well but he's a year off just yet IMO. He's going to be top draw but 12 months worth of development will do him wonders.

But you aren't comparing them to the NRL players, so you either change Reeds stats to match the rest, or change the other 4 or 5 to match.

Your call......haha.

The stats don't really tell you much about how good the players are. If you are a player who returns a lot of kicks then you're almost certain to rack up a very high number of metres made per game and per carry. A winger who did nothing all game but returned kicks could average a high number of metres, but a player who finishes off tries in stunning fashion, is excellent at beating a man one on one and never drops a high cross field kick but doesn't always drop back for kicks could end up looking much worse in comparison. Stats don't tell you more than what you could gather simply by watching a game.

A good winger in this day and age should be able to do both. Briscoe, Hall, BJB, Charnley and McGilvery all are good kick returners and score some great tries.

What makes a nice change is that we are having this debate over those decent young wingers shown in the stats, instead of being lumped with some average wingers who are our only options.

Remember the days of Mark Calderwood and Ade Gardner? Im sure we even shoved Leon Pryce on the wing at one time



We are actually building potentially the best england team for a while and if we can get a decent coach in we should look good for the world cup in 2013.

We've got a great fullback in Sam Tomkins, 3 good halves in Widdop, Lomax and Brough. We've always had a decent pack. The above shows we've got loads of good young wingers coming through and recently Jack Reed has chosen to play for England, which is a massive boost and Bridge can do alot of damage.

Centre is our weakest spot though IMO because players like Yeaman, Whelam and Atkins dont cut it IMO, so if Bridge or Reed get an injury we've not got good enough quality to cover it. Which is poor seeing as there are 12 English teams in Super League. Maybe after Joels had a pre season and another full season learning the trades of a centre he will be in for a shout? I wouldnt pick him at the moment in the centres for England but it could be a future possibility if he carries on improving.

Wests Tigers' Chris Heighington added to England train-on squad.

Class player by all accounts.

We've been that bad in the last 10 years I've gone past caring where these lads are from tbh. The Aussies have plenty of islanders playing for them so why not us have guys with English mothers and people like Manu who qualify on residency grounds.

There is an attitude of 'we should be able to produce our own' but if the Aussies don't think that way with the NRL why should we. We only need to look at the English cricket and Union sides to see our attitude is out of date.

You can bet your bottom dollar Uate will be playing for Aus even though he in Fijian, same with Petro.

Nathan Fien is Aussie through and through yet will play for NZ.

I think we have good enough second rowers to not have to pick Manu but I've not seen much of Heighington to comment.

Well think of Heighington very much in the Sean O’Loughlin mould, similar type of player, massive workhorse

Manu is a beast, if he made himself available and i was England coach i'd pick him.

I actually think we have a squad that can compete this time round, just a shame Big Sam is injured.

Ste mcbananaaaa as he employed some 1 to find out if every Ozy s got English ancestors so he can pick them, I'd rather pick young English kids and get beat than pick imports

Why?

As it stands we have Widdop who is English with English parents and only moved to Oz when he was 16.

Reed who is English with English parents and moved to Oz aged 3.

Heighington who was born in Oz to an English father.

Why not pick the best available?

Tom Briscoe, Kris Welham and Kirk Yeaman added to England train-on squad alongside Reed and Heighington.
Arundel, Broughton, Cox, Donaldson, Gale, Houghton, Ratchford, M Smith, Taylor, Watts, Westerman added to England Knights squad.

If Heighington has been added why hasn't Ellis?