Not in the sense that say lyon is in drawing a man and passing, but Watkins has a fantastic offload and if not for some fantastic work by the NZ defence would have put Hardaker in.

The wingers playing outside Watkins scored 23 tries last year as many as Burgess scored.

There was 30 minutes before that on the red button.

Anyone who bags Chris Hill clearly doesn't understand rugby league. Arguably the best prop in Super League - rarely loses the contact either in attack or defence, has excellent footwork and a great engine for a big man. England need to use his passing game at the line a little more IMO, it's up there with James Graham's.

He wasn't excellent in defence at all. He was to blame for the Kiwis first try, and was it not for McGilvary saving him, would have been to blame for one in the second.

He is a special player, who has far more within him than he is displaying consistently. At international level you need to do much more than you do at club level. It would be such a waste for such talent not yo see the best of it.

how do you reckon?
wasn't Watkins left covering two defenders on his outside because McGilivary had dropped back?
Watkins moved out with the rest of the line, but the guys inside of him were unable to stop the play - how is Watkins to blame for that?
McGilivary was about 25m behind the defensive line on the short side when the ball got moved out to the overlap, and didnt move up at all.
Or who was the defender inside of Smith who let his man run up in support while jogging back half-d watching the play unfold? Lockers, was it?

how the hell was Watkins to blame for NZ's first try? What the hell were you watching? When NZ played the ball about 20 yards in, Watkins was literally the only player set in the defensive line against 7 NZ players. If you are looking for people to blame for that try McGillveray is far too far back to cover a kick that was never going to happen when NZ had stacked 7 attacking players against a 1 player defensive line and for coming in to tackle Luke when we had 2 men in the middle and no-one outside, Smith fails to execute a tackle twice allowing the ball to be shifted and O'loughlin stops his chase back, allowing Luke to come from behind him and take the ball on the inside.

It was a virtually none-existent defensive line and the only real 'mistake' that cost us was McGillvray coming in on Luke because we had Hardaker on Luke, Widdop covering the inside, and had McGillvray stayed he had Nightingale but even that wasnt a huge error.

However big Watkins heart is, it's certainly bigger than some posters' brains if this thread is anything to go by.

His performance yesterday was similar to Bateman's the week before. Defended well, made a couple of half brakes, but made some poor errors.

Some Rhinos fans are absolutely blind to our own players misgivings... Not one of our lads played to their potential for England & Watkins was poor yesterday...

Hill offers bugger all???

What series were you watching?

He thought Tautai would be one of best forwards in the league at Wigan, Bowen would win MOS, and Ben Pomeroy would be one of the best centres in the league....

not sure how you get that.
im sure everyone has agreed that Watkins was poor with the ball yesterday, made too many mistakes - just like Bateman the week before.
Hall played well enough all series imho, considering he never got any decent ball.
Zak wasnt as good as in attack as he can be, but his defence was good and its not like he had loads of ball in attacking positions or got loads of ball out the back - our forwards were barely moving the ball or offloading.

There would be no need to make excuses to why they hadn't played to their potential had they actually played to their potential, so I think we both know none played how we know they can

That's not true though is it! last week Bateman made 100 metres with ball in hand, I don't think Watkins made anything like that yesterday and as I've already stated only 1 pass to his winger in three games, and he has had opportunity in all the games to at least give them a run.

yeah, maybe he should have given them completely useless ball like Batemen did, after running his winger out of space

I made no mention of his metres, so I don't know you brought stats into it, I formed my opinion based on what I saw. Have the stats even been published yet? How can you disregard my comment based on stats without actually seeing the the stats from the game?