Why is Watkins getting so much criticism? I agree he was pretty average but I don't he he really got opportunities to shine (same for Whitehead). Sarginson got far more good ball and squandered most of it, and also made a poor defensive read for their first try, yet he is barely being criticised at all.

Lomax was good for most of the game but really let himself down with a poor 1 on 1 tackle attempt.
Despite what I said earlier about Batemans aggression I thought he did look a little small out there today.

Bateman weren't his usual self, Sarginson went into headless chicken mode where he forgets his job is to put his winger away, the halves were none existent, Hodgeson gave his passes slightly late time and time again, we allowed the kiwis to lie all over us.

When we were handsing the ball out we had no inside runners so the Kiwis just slid across and we didn't utilise the offloads as scoots which would work well against a tiring Kiwi team especially when we had a hooker on the bench.

Next week I'd change Sarginson for Percival, Bateman for Farrell, Gale for Williams. We will put a decent score on Scotland but will give the team to gel ready for the Australia game.

Positives - McGilvary and the pack.

We've seen this year what Sarginsons best position is and it isn't at centre. He was really poor today and should lose his place to Percival next week. His Centre partner is lucky there are any other viable options because Watkins continues to be more hype then substance. Where his huge rep has come from I'm not too sure at all (Sinfield described as second to only Inglis as the worlds best centre pre match which nearly made me fall of my chair).

Both halves were poor with Gale especially struggling in both attack and in defence (I've not see a guy get bumped off as many tackles in a long while). I was really dissapointed with the bench as well. I thought the Burgess twins and Daryl Clark really struggled and we need far more from them.

I'd make a couple of changes for next week (Percival for Sarginson, Williams for Gale and Farrell for T Burgess) and line up-

Lomax
McGillvary Watkins Percival Hall
Widdop Williams
Hill Hodgson Graham
Farrell Whitehead S Burgess

G Burgess Cooper Bateman Clark

Hodgson didn't really stamp his authority on the game for me, especially when he came on for that second spell. Just didn't get it in his hands enough. Widdop and Gale just too pedestrian for me, a far cry from and Edwards and Gregory combo. Just far too predictable near their line and neither a game-changer.Thought Cooper did well when he came on. If we'd had a Newlove or Senior out there at centre I'd feel much more confident of us doing something.

Bateman took a bang to the head early doors and probably wasn't right afterwards. Would go some way to explaining a below par performance. Size is not an issue with him much as it wasn't with Billy McGinty all those years ago.

dont think he was poor thought both packs negated each other with some very good defense

First comment I have is regarding the Burgess twins. They simply make too many basic errors at this level. When a game is going to be as tight as Test matches should be their ability to lose focus and poor ball retention will always kill us. It was the same in the World Cup Semi.

Sarg was woeful needs dropping. Bateman unfortunately is nullified at this level in the pack due to the size and strength of the opposition. Percivall for me is also too lightweight for this level so I would like to see Bateman playing centre.

Apart from the interception I thought Widdop played reasonably well and Gale did ok too, however I think we missed a trick not playing Williams who is a more natural runner and takes on the line which could have been crucial as the big Kiwi's tired.

Had we had a Newlove or Senior out there we would have been out of sight by half-time , sadly what we have is nowhere near that quality

We lost too much intensity when Graham and Hill went off, Gale was ineffectual and Sarginson bombed two tries.

Overall kicking game was poor - too many kicks to their full back and they were allowed to lie on way too much in the tackle, I have never seen second rows take so long to get off the grounded player.

The game was there to be won as I did not think NZ were that good (certainly nowhere need as good as previous NZ teams) but we just lacked that final composure to close the game out and made too many basic errors at key times. Play like that against Australia and they will wipe the floor with us.

Bennett needs to shake the mentality that just cos you ply your trade in the NRL, doesn’t automatically make you the best player in that position. Diabolical that the current MOS, Lance Todd and Harry Sunderland trophy winners weren’t on the pitch on Saturday.

His comments pre game were pretty alarming, he said he is expecting the NRL players to all lead the SL players, can some explain to me how any of the Burgess' or Cooper or Whitehead or Widdop or even Hodgeson are better leaders than Chris Hill? Or arguably Luke Gale?

His arrogance knows no bounds. He'd pick 17 NRL-based English players if he could even if SL ones are better. Sarge will be in the team now until he retreats back to SL.

Did he say that?

That is extremely alarming. As you point out how can young lads teach a stunning player like Chris Hill any lessons regardless of the league they play in? There are a number of reasons why Hill, Roby, Hall, Lockers etc haven't gone over to the NRL over the years and it isn't because they're not good enough (very far from it).

You can only hope that sort of comment has been mid interpreted.

I took the comment as more a mentality and approach to games in the NRL. Bare in mind we are playing the best players from the NRL, Bennet to me was saying that we need to be more consistent and play for 80 minutes, that the England players playing in the NRL can bring some of that mentality and approach to the team and the others followed that lead. It wasn't anything sinister, well that's how I took those comments.

I went over to the game at the weekend. I'm not sure what I expected but saw no discernible improvement from Steve McNamara's tenure. I also took exception to the remark by Bennett that the players need to learn to win. Well, someone ought to have pointed out to him that England defeated NZ only last year. It seemed to me that Bennett was getting in an excuse.

The game was pretty boring. England's Plan A consisted of - Five drives and a kick followed by Plan B - Five drives and a kick and if that didn't work revert to Plan A. If Brian Noble had come out with that game plan he'd have been laughed out of town as being too old fashioned.

The team was crying out for some imagination. Widdop and Gale are too similar to play together. We saw nothing of Gale. It desperately needed Williams or Brown to offer something different.

Sarginson seemed to be picked on the back of a match winning GF performance at FULL BACK! Percival is far and away the best English centre and can consider himself unlucky not to be picked ahead of both Sarge and the useless Watkins.

Lockers was badly missed. I'm afraid from what I have seen Burgess, once you have stripped away the hype, is just not in the same class as Lockers (but then I'm biased).

To beat the Aussies - Graham and Hill to do more game time. Brown or Williams in the halves. Get rid of Watkins. Clark to get more game time. Even then I'm not confident.

A lack of skill and execution under pressure is the problem, not necessarily imagination, imo. Now if the players Bennett picks don't perform I hope he'll be quick to wield the axe. His problem is that England lacks a world-class 6 and 7 and currently he's trying to find the right pairing while still trying to win a tournament.

He's spot on when he says we need to learn to win - we had numerous opportunities to win on Saturday and failed to execute. I would lay the bulk of the blame at the feet of the players rather than Bennett.

The Kiwis sent over an extremely weak squad for last year's test series so you can't read anything into that. In fact, we still struggled to beat them and the rugby on offer during that series was dull as dishwater. The game at Olympic Stadium was one of the worst matches I've ever seen.

Extremely weak squad is way wide of the mark imo. They were missing Tamaulolo, obviously a big miss but we were missing Sam and George Burgess in the pack so that evens it out.... basically we are talking Shaun Johnson, who is a huge player for them and the difference. Rest of that team is very similar to the one that took the park at the weekend. That team also has RTS in it -

FB 1 Roger Tuivasa-Sheck
RW 2 Jason Nightingale
RC 3 Jordan Kahu
LC 4 Dean Whare
LW 5 Shaun Kenny-Dowall
FE 6 Peta Hiku
HB 7 Tuimoala Lolohea
PR 8 Jesse Bromwich
HK 9 Issac Luke (Captain)
PR 10 Sam Moa
SR 11 Kevin Proctor
SR 12 Tohu Harris
LK 13 Adam Blair (Captain)
Substitutions:
BE 14 Kodi Nikorima
BE 15 Martin Taupau
BE 16 Ben Matulino
BE 17 Sio Siua Taukeiaho
Coach:
Stephen Kearney

And Whare, for me certainly one of the best centres in the world.

Teams are always going to be missing players in the end of year internationals. You only need to look at our season to see how lucky England and New Zealand are that they had as many fit players to choose from this year and last.

That was a strong NZ side last year and we did well to beat it. It's an even stronger NZ side this year and we came up short by a point in a game we should have won. I certainly wouldn't use that as a way of talking down last years series win.

For how dissapointing last week was I take comfort in the fact that it's another international against Oz or NZ that we've competed in until the last minute. It's a long while since either of them blew us away and that wasn't always the case! We've progressed as a side and will hopefully continue to do so. If we can keep sticking in games against those two we'll win one of the big trophies before long.

I would agree with this. I just got a bit miffed with the whole new era thing under Bennett. I thought that McNamara did a decent job and was unfairly treated. Allowing for the relative resources available to national coaches Bennett won't have had to change much. So to start talking about us needing to 'learn' how to win annoyed me. The same group of players won well enough last year.

I'm afraid that I'm in the camp that says we should have an English coach in charge. We have plenty of English coaches to choose from for what is a part time job. In the past recently retired players like Ellery have done it. I see no reason why the likes of Paul Sculthorpe or Kevin Sinfield perhaps alongside Brian Noble wouldn't do just as good a job. Personally I'd have stuck with McNamara. If we are successful under Bennett it will only be because we got an Aussie in (or so the argument will go).

Luke Gale is the selection that doesn't add up to me. He has achieved nothing in his career. He plays for a mid table club who bottle it any time they get near a big game. Maybe if Bennett had picked George Williams he might have had a 'winners' mentality out there.

His big failing from Saturday was his pre match interview with Tanya Arnold which was rude bodering on plain weird! A chance to bull the game up and he seemed like he didn't want to be there.

McNamara did well overall I thought but I did feel it was time for a change to see if a new coach could take us on to that next level of winning either the four nations or the World Cup. That is ultimately what Bennett will be judged on and we'll have to wait until the end of next years World Cup to really judge him.

I do believe Wane, McDermott or Powell could have done the job to a very good standard but what always worries me with that is the internal politics that come with it. You always get those people who will say they're picking their favourites from their clubs and rumours quickly surface of friction in the squad between different clubs players if things aren't going well.

Who knows, in three weeks time we may be sat here as Four Nations winners. We can but dream!

After watching that interview and others on Saturday i got the distinct impression that Bennett has taken the England job just to put two fingers up to the Australian Rugby League management and others. He gives the impression he doesn't give a toss about English Rugby League either in his words or his body language .

Regards , EW

See you all in Coventry

I tend to agree, EW. Was talking about it on an Aussie forum the other day, and when I made a similar comments about Bennett's attitude, body language, etc, the comment came back, ah, it's Wayne Bennett, he's always been like that with the media. I pointed out that that might not be so bad in Australia, where he's revered as the Greatest Coach Evah, etc, but in England it's a different story, and any casual viewer seeing an interview excerpt on the TV news is just going to think, who's that pig-ignorant Aussie?

Bennett has said that Williams will definitely play.

Difference is Shuan Johnson is probably the best player in the world and (unlike any England player) has the ability to win game from nothing.
Look at the 2013 semi (before Johnson had developed into a world class player), Sinfield had him on toast for 79 minutes, but when his team truly needed him he came up with the goods.
I just don't see Widdop or even Gale doing that at international level.