But if his intentions are to play a huge pack then going with Westerman to start at 13 is ridiculous, like you point out, it's not his game. I'm a fan of Westerman, think he is a good player but he has to play as a ball handling LF to be effective.

As for the Aussies, one thing you can pretty much be certain on, they won't play that badly again next week.

they definately miss thurstan and cherry evans seems to have gone backwards this season. they will still be a formidable challenge but i was encouraged at how easily NZ made ground through their forwards. proctor had a great game

I think McNamara should build the England team around westerman, who's was good for hull last season in a poor team!!! Get a grip people, for me totally summed up westerman today's performance, decent player, never be anything more

Westerman made 33 tackles in hat, about what 40 minutes of play with 6 runs for 60metres and no errors aside from a missed tackle maybe?
So on that I'd say he was totally used as a prop, a stopper down the middle. Macbanana is clueless, it was so obvious we had them on the outside which Westerman could have being instrumental in but no..we just tried the crash bang stuff. I've never seen such a poor attacking side in years..
Westerman is being bagged but tbh whilst he hasn't set the world alight, he poked his nose through a few times he did very very little wrong in his first international outing after not playing for the best part of two months..
J Tomkins and Ferres need dropping if you ask me.

I think many forget that Samoa are no mugs , this was never going to be a walk over. To many mistakes and discipline made it tougher but they got the win and thats what matters .

I think you miss understand me. I don't think it was Maccas intention initially, but we got sucked into it. Hence he took Westy off and went down the middle. If the off load in front of their sticks to Smith had come off we would have been praising a mom performance IMHO. It didn't and we went into our shell which required far too many props and a complete lack of inventiveness. All Smith did was kick. Widdop did very little on attack and Tomkins was in effective all round. All be it Martyn Sadler claimed his try was a brilliant piece of inventive play (see is tweet).
The only true zip and spark we got was from Clark. First touch of the ball creates a try and then went into his shell.
It was negative all round. If we had used the ball out wide the Samoans were there for the taking, but we decided on a forward battle.

That said we could not under estimate the Samoans who have a wealth of NRL experience, but we should have been a lot smarter, starting with our pivots spreading it wide.

Fair summary.

No errors except a poor offload that led to another players' error.

International LF is a different position than Super League LF. Watch how Greg Bird plays.

Oh wow, so you think listening to the commentary and repeating it makes any valid point whatsoever...it doesn't.
Greg Bird can afford to play the way he does because he has had for the most part top quality halves and pivots that can get the ball to where its needed..we don't. And frankly one badly executed offload that didn't come off doesn't validate the original comment made or have you only been watching rugby for 5 minutes??

I'd rather watch someone make attempts like that than crash bang boring wallop down the middle with a micturate poor kick chase for 70 minutes until your opposition flag and you get them out wide/find gaps down the middle. That's all that happened Saturday. It was obvious they were going to run out of gas before us but frankly it was as dull as dishwater, predictable and the attacking lines were truly shocking.

the Kiwis will smash us to pieces on that showing.

Western an starting against the convicts on sunday

Greg Bird gave away a couple of cheap penalties that are more a cardinal sin than trying a difficult offload.

As Noble said. The offload was worth the risk given the state of play and position on the field.

Bird doesn't play loose man for GC and is only playing there due to Gallen's ban. Comparison is pointless.

To be fair to Clark he did very well until he got nearly broken in half.

Gutsy effort from the Samoans again this morning , There not far off from beating one of the big boys soon .

Twas a cracking effort from them!

Pathetic 2nd half........Smith and Hodgesons terrible and why wait til 5 mins from the end to sling it about...do it from start and Sheens totally out coached Mcbanna

The more I see it on slow mo..its a try.....cheating Aussie gets and how the hell did we not get a pen in the 2nd half.....time to stand up to the Aussies and say we want a neutral ref

I think if hall had claimed a try it would have been given,but he tried to touch it down again before it went dead,and didnt look like he'd scored.

macnamara got it comepletely wrong for me today. Not enough rotation in the front row - how many minutes did graham play? and too much in the back row meaning our props were out on their feet for the last 15 minutes, plus he didn't have clarke on the field for enough minutes. Thought our last tackle plays were poor and our halves don't offer enough.

I don't want to bag hodgson as he's a local lad but he's nowhere near international class IMO and that period he was on in the 2nd half we were devoid of go forward. If we'd had another decent hooker to interchange with clarke I think we could have probably won the game

Would've preferred J Tomkins or Ferres to be dropped after the Samoa performance,
surely Whitehead should come in.

The missed opportunity just before half time was a killer.

Very poor second half performance against the most ordinary Aussie side I've ever seen.

Agree about clark made a big difference when he was on,but what do we expect but poor decisions,when we have a clown like mcnamara as coach,I do
believe our current squad is as good as aussie and the kiwi's, and one of the best we have ever had IMO.

We lost because of our inability to change things. Once the Aussies brought Hunt on and moved Smith to 13 they grabbed the initiative. We should have countered this by taking O'Loughlin off and putting a prop at 13, brought Clark back on and just probed behind the ruck.
Sarginson was the only Wigan player to have a decent game. Smith was average and Tomkins, Charnley, Lockers & Farrell were very poor.
Shame we don't have a decent back up at FB because the golden boy has been woeful in this series.