thats because he is a full back/winger. he made a good job of centre in SL,as did lee gilmour.

however the aussies had dummy runners all over the place and the fringes were dragged all over the pitch leaving the outside backs isolated.
the fact is senior apart we don't have a good centre.
also a better coach would have the team far better organised

Hello and welcome to 2004!!

Burgess's first major contributions to the game were 2 dropped balls and a penalty conceded (and I'm sorry but you have to be awake at international level - even I knew McGuire was going to offload from the tackle, they were the sort of passes that were sticking in the second half).

Burgess was sloppy against France as well and dropped planty of ball, but somehow nothing sticks on him at the moment.

Quite. I think he's been trying a bit too hard. His ball security is terrible. The rest of his game is great though. But, at this level, being as far behind in talent terms as we are, he cannot turn the ball over as much as he has been doing.

And if one eyed Wigan fans think its' Sinfield and McGuires fault that Tomkins couldn;t get his hands on the ball for 50 mins then you have to question whether the kid is up to it yet. Do you think Andy Gregory would've let other players monopolise the ball?

Tomkins is not yet a dominating half back. He was completely overawed in the 1st half. The only people to blame for that are Tomkins himself and Smith for perhaps selecting him when he wasn't ready.

2nd half, Tomkins was much better but he will have to develop more to his game than that predictable step.

i cannot belief mags has been slaughterd yes he didnt play is best game for country but to write him of no.I think smith got it wrong playing jp 2nd row he defended too far in leaving argubly the worlds best player inglis and slater to have one on ones briscoe should have come in and forced the aussies to go round them a sliding defence which is used every week at leeds.The 2 new halves eastman and tomkins were good in last 25mins when we had more ball and all bares well for future.Sam burgess came to leeds with bradford this year and was slaughterd about his performance and was taken of ,yesterday he looked every inch the great young prospect he no doubt his .Point is class is permanent semi final last year mags was our best player for england the player andrew johns was raving about fact, he has scored in grand finals world club finals test matches against any country, fact still only 26 so come on lets get of his back .

The reason Tomkins was not seen in the first half was because our pack was getting destroyed. The introduction of Crabtree and Burgess, gave us a bit of grunt up front as they didnt seem intimidated by the Aussies. Also good ball from Sinfield at Hooker meant Tomkins was in the game more.

Absolutely spot on

with 3 titles on the trot, the knives will be out for our players and that's the agenda people are peddling.

Personally i thought we'd have done better if it wasn't for those stinking saints players.

So its OK for Tompkins to be invisible when our pack are getting hammered, but McGuire gets slaughtered for it.

The problem was, McGuire was invisible even when our pack [iweren't[/i getting hammered! And unlike Tomkins, he's played the Aussies before so there is this expectation that he will actually be able to bring something to the party. Which he profoundly failed to do.

He was poor but the amount of stick he's getting is disgusting, it shouldn't matter whether you've played the Aussies before or not if your supposidly good enough to play test rugby then you should be able "to bring something to the party" Every England player in the first half was shocking with the exception of Crabtree and Sinfield, even Tompkins and Burgess who are getting creamed over were shizz. But it seems to me McGuire is being made a scapegoat for what was a very poor performance from everyone in an England shirt

Maguire was poor and struggled I agree but wasnt helped by Tompkins failure to get into the game early on.

Tompkins didnt get hold of the game from the halves and he should have been expected to from the 1st minute..........in similar circumstances a young Shaun Edwards would have wanted the ball at every opportunity.

I thought once we were beat he came into the game and performed reasonably but you cant start performing at 26-0 down!!