Has been or still is ? And for how much longer.

He is a player in decline - even in decline he has very few superiors

Have to agree.

However I still say Tomkins would be better in the halves taking the place of Chase - Sinfield looked the better of the two - with Hardaker at FB. (Pretty sure he would not have been outjumped by Ingliss). Widdop was a waste of space and would have another forward on the bench; it also has to be said Ablett is not an international at this level.

As for George Burgess....who was it that said props have to have matured a great deal before they can be considered world class?? Bring on the kids ...

The NRL.com player ratings have Sinfield at 8 out of 10. The highest mark they gave any England player.

I suppose some people will just describe them as a parochial Sydney based website that are biased in favour of the Golden Boot winer.

I thought Sinfield had a very good game yesterday

Get over on to TRL,that's hilarious.Should be nowhere near the England set up,doesn't offer anything at all to the team.

It's a nightmare over there, there's a few posters who just cannot accept Simfield could possibly play well.

Honest opinion Sinfield has been a great leader for Leeds no one can doubt that, he's a great kicker both with ball in hand and goal kicker.

However how he won worlds best player is beyond me, The Aussies had 3 better players in the same team to start off with in Cronk, Slater and Smith and Tomkins over here was playing better.

Sinfield bit like kick and claps Johnny Wilkinson, great kicker but does he really do all that much with ball in hand or beat a man?

As for England the form halfbacks would have been Smith of Wigan and Brough of Huddersfield.

Will be a Kiwi vs Aussie Final

What Sinfield brings is structure and a reasonably cool head under pressure, without which England would look absolutely clueless. We shouldn't need a halfback to just bring that - any top class half back should - but in terms of English there aren't any who can be RELIED on to do it in big games.

That's not to say he'll create bucketloads of tries, or make breaks all over the field. But I've seen plenty of GB/England teams in recent years where the attacking play is literally all over the place because neither halfback has a clue how to run a set of six. The result against Australia is basically embarrassing.

I'd have no problem picking a more dangerous attacking halfback than Sinfield, IF he could also organise. That isn't a strength of Chase or Widdopp (possibly in the future). Brough hasn't ever delivered when it counts, and took his bat home anyway.

As for McNamara, I still am not sure about his actual coaching, but none of the problems England had yesterday were of his making.

What about moving Sinfield from 7 to 9? That was clearly pre planned.

You're right - I agree that wasn't a good move. Nobody should need to move a halfback when spelling a hooker. I wonder if it was more about wanting Widdopp on the bench than anything else?

If only Roby could play 80 minutes we'd be able to have a far better balanced bench.

I agree regarding smith, but brough although he's had a great season, he chose Scotland and I don't think SMC is a fan of players switching nationalities, which I agree with once you play for one national side that should be that. I know other countries do it but it doesn't make it anymore right.
It's more confusing the non-inclusion of Lunt nd crabtree IMO

Spot on mate, I'm fed up of reading the half back, mainly Sinfield, bashing on here and twitter. Its astonishing the mental disability so called knowledgeable Rugby League fans have at times. The mistakes were obvious. The mistakes that lead to Australia putting points on the board are simply not good enough at this level. Did Sinfield or Chase for that matter do anything absolutely world class off the scale stuff? No. did they do their jobs and not do anything to put the Aussies to an advantage? Yes. If the team completes the sets, has a low penalty count and generally stay error free and still lose the game then question the half backs, until then its complete nonsense.

Very true.The last time we did those things in a big game against the big 2 was the 2011 4N against the Kiwis and Sinfield was exeptional.

We had around 40% of the ball in that second half on Sat. and most of that was in our own half.even the Aussie halves would struggle to impact a game on the back of that.for the record i thought Sinfield was one of our better players on the day but that wont stop people with an agenda against him pointing the finger at him when we lose as it was their de fault setting to do so before the competition even began.