Teams announced...

rlhttps://www.skysports.com/rugbyleague/match_preview/0,19936,11070_3245579,00.htmlrl

Australia by plenty IMHO.

Finally something close to the team that should have played from the beginning

I stopped reading the teams after I got to Cooper Cronk. Made me feel a little sick

Anyway, looking at those 2 teams I would say the forwards are evenly matched. I don't want to comment on how thier depleted back line still s**ts on ours though.

Glad to see Brown and Widdop dropped though. Not sure how's Lockers wills go at 6. Can't be any worse to be fair.

What time is kick off?

Why a loose forward at stand off? We never seem to learn about playing people out of position

Kick off is confusing the hell out of me. I think it's 7:30, but the clocks go back that night too, so could mean watching it at what would be 8:30. Don't really know. I'm just Sky+ing it and watching it when I wake up pretending it's live.

kick off on sky @7.00 but make sure you put your clock back

if it not more than a 18 point win for the aussies then we have done well.

was widdop picked as a "just in case he did turn good" ?

Widdop was picked because he had a good game in midseason. Had McGire and Eastmond been fit I doubt he would have made the squad though. Anyway as far as O'Loughlin at 6 goes it might not be a bad move. He can shut Lockyer down and if we play deep enough he has good enough hands to put Stomkins into space. In the Grand final the halves were solid if unspectacular for Wigan and Stomkins did all the damage hitting the ball from deep as a 3rd play maker. Our kicking game will once again kill us though.

He probably is but I still think that O'Loughlin is a better 13 than 6 but Burgess, Ellis and Westwood can all play there.
Saying that, we don't have much choice at stand off if we drop Brown and put S Tompkins to full back.

Call me cynical but Widdop was picked in the first place because McBanana wanted to make it look like he'd done some work by finding an English NRL Reserve that nobody knew about, instead of picking the team the press were suggesting he picked and looking like he was just following suit.

Widdop plays well... McBanana is a super coach for finding such talent that isn't in the spot light.
Widdop plays poorly... McBanana gets praised for his courage in giving the youngsters a chance and not just picking people on name.

Either way, picking somebody nobody had heard of very nearly made it look like he was doing something worthy of getting paid for, and not just flying round the world watching RL and booking White Water Rafting trips.

He'd have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for those pesky kids!

Grow up.

too many out of position IMO. We have no depth

I think we were lacking a lot of aggression and steel over last few games. Isaac Luke was putting himself about last week and noone silenced the little tw*t. I'm sure Keef would have stood for that, so would JP. We need to meet fire with fire and show we will not back down. The individual players are not good enough, but if they stand together and do their jobs they can achieve.
I really can not see England causing an upset, but god do i hope they can.