Don't be silly. The lad was out of his depth 1st half but really stood up 2nd half.

You could recognise the failings in your players despite your club bias (as I have with McGuire) or you can make dumb comments like that one.

Tompkins really stepped up in the second, Smith obv. woke him up at HT.

Eastmond look capable once he settled down and didn't have McGuire throwing tripe at him.

Hilarious to see Slater and Thurston - like spoilt children.

Forwards immense in the second.

There is hope.

Sinny showed his class in the second half and I was surpised Smith took him off just when were really threatening the impossible. And first half he obviously was expecting Brent Webb to be on the end of his offload near the line.
I was a bit baffled though as to why Roby was still on the pitch when Sinny was playing 9? Why not have another back row on?

One thing it did show is that we lack a creative 9 in England, and what a difference it makes when you have a footballer in that position as opposed to a scoot and pop merchant.

My take was that the Aussies were getting tired and not retiring, especially as we were getting over the gainline. To maintain their line speed they were not retiring 10.
McGuire did have a poor game - certainly not his Leeds standard, but first half he was horribly exposed in defence, but I'd still keep him in the team. His usual standard is way better than Tomkins or Myler.

Your comments sir, show your ignorance of the game and your stubborn bias against Sinfield who as usual was one of the most creative players on the field and proved you wrong once again. Sinfield was one of our top tackers as well.

We were always going to be vunerable out wide with their superb pacy backs. Playing Peacock in the 2nd row was a mistake as his lack of pace for the wide defence of this position had to be covered by Sinfield who also had to be the midfield organiser and also provided cover on the other wing. Impossible task. We looked better when Burgess came on for Peacock.

You also overlooked the positional errors by our inexperienced young right winger who left the gaps that made it look like Smith, McGuire and Sinfield were at fault. You didn't see it repeated in the 2nd half after the changes were made.

Too much to expect you to eat your words I suppose?

Excellent points. For Lokyer's try Sinfield had actually made a tackle on the left centre position so when the Aussies moved the ball right Mcguire, Smith and Briscoe were covering the whole right side - with no second row out there at all. I can't imagine any coach wanting to have Inglis running wide one on one at Smith (or frankly at anyone one on one).
Briscoe didn't really offer any input to the wide defence.
Sinfield nearly always defends inside the second row, but with Peacock playing 11 the problem was that he really wanted to be in midfield smashing Aussie forwards - so that's what he did.

I don't see where people are getting this false notion of "hope" from. The convicts had won the game after try 3 and after that they switched off. When they need to play we have no answer for them. If we somehow make the final it willl be a rout.

We have some capable players but we just don't play like a team.

There isn't a molecule of Australian mentality that would accept being nilled and conceding 16 points in a second half. If England had had as much fortunate ball bounces as the Aussies had in the first half we could be looking at the most embarassing defeat in Aussie test history.

But can the Aussies play for the full eighty?

They dont need to

Thought sinfield was class in the second half today!

Sinfield looked slow in the first half but had a much improved second.

IMO Super league backs are too flat and dont create the running angles , and backing up like the Aussies.

hate to say it but your kev played well some daft balls but never stopped trying and think paid of for him.

If you think ANY aussie team would switch off when they had the chance to put 50+ on an england team at home then yer pretty naive imo mate.
In the 2nd half we cut out the mistakes and played to some kind of structure and did well off the back of a good go forward and i have to admit at H/T i thought it was gonna be 50+ but credit to the team they dug in and regained some pride.

I thought Sinfield had an excellent game - unlike McGuire who had a shocker - the forwards as a whole can hold their head up.

Although Gareth doesn't agree - today's game showed the importance of quality centres - they had them we didn't. The sooner we can produce two serious centres the sooner we will give the Aussies something to think about