Before Brough opted to play for Scotland McNamarra had a chance to select him.

I fell sleep half way through this paranoia driven rant!!

He selected somebody else. Our man of steel duly had a hissy fit and rediscovered his Scottish patriotism. Because he's a fighter like that.

Yet stayed awake long enough to reply with the usual BS you post when stalking me!

IIRC the line at the time was that one McCoach had the first option to select him but didn't (despite Brough outplaying his opponents more or less on a weekly basis during 2013) which alerted the other McCoach to inquire if Brough would be available for Scotland instead.

RL World Cups tend not to come around that often or on a reliable schedule and I'm not surprised when players take any chance open to play in them. Only surprised that with a highly competitive group of forwards and finally a few potentially exciting backs that one of the very few talented English born and bred half-backs could be overlooked in a World Cup year.

I suspect that the England coach might have had some issues with the player which were not directly linked to his playing abilities

There have been plenty of comparatively slow half-backs in Test history (not sure I'd place Darren Lockyer among them) but any comparison between Wally Lewis and Kevin Sinfield as test stand-offs should probably end about there.



And in your opinion Wigan massively downgraded when they replaced Leuluai and Finch with Smith and Green but that didn't appear to stop the Cherry and Whites improving to do the double in 2013 with the inferior players collection the individual MOTM accolades in the respective finals.

Danny Brough has so far led his second level Scotland to a win against Tonga and the USA while also taking a point off Italy - which is more than can be said for McNamara's England led by Sinfield during the WC warm-up game at Salford, in a game where McNamara somewhat ironically bemoaned 'I just think our mentality was really wrong for this game.'



It's highly unlikely to affect the result given Scotland's second level status while playing the reigning World champions but I'll still expect to see Brough take on and offer a running threat to the Kiwi's defensive line which will be sadly absent the following week from Sinfield if England meet New Zealand in the semi-final.

That's fair comment. I can appreciate that Brough was faced with a difficult choice. It doesn't change the fact that the decision he made was effectively to abandon the England cause.

Except, of course, you know, those weeks when it mattered, like the playoffs and the cup, just as has always been the case.

Brough IMO outplayed Sinfield on every occasion they faced each other in 2013 - including a game that should matter a great deal to both in the Challenge Cup.

8th March 2013 - Leeds 8 - 32 Huddersfield (Sinfield and Brough at stand-off)

11th May 2013 - Huddersfield 24 - 8 Leeds (Brough and Sinfield at stand-off)

The away game at Huddersfield in June Sinfield missed with a damaged thumb but again Leeds couldn't contain Brough who engineered the 40 - 18 Huddersfield win.

So to summarise:

The comparative ability of one individual player versus another can be defined solely by the results of their teams. Ergo, Ian Kirke is better than Tony Puletua.

The comparative merits of one poster's opinions versus another can be defined by how well they did in a prediction competition on an internet messageboard.

The world according to tvoc.