I thought Widdop was excellent and wondered what the h*ll Williams contributed. He is the best half back prospect in SL but did sweet FA in this match. Out of hid depth, unsurprisingly.

I thought he warmed to the task and by full time had a solid game.

As I've said on another Thread, Danny Mags should be selected for England. If they want to try New Halfback Combinations, then isn't that what the England Knights concept is for?

This series and next years 4 nations should be used to develop the squad for the 2017 world cup. there aren't that many opportunities to play players together at international level.

Leave Danny mags out and concentrate on the players we hope to be playing in 2017.

Genuinely surprised at this. Once he found his feet I thought Williams showed a lot of class. He has that extra seconds with the ball magic about him.

The problem with this is exactly what has been said. Williams nor Smith will be the Halves in 2017. They swap and change depending on who has had a decent club season.

Instead of trying out different Halves year on year, why not have them play the in the England Knights Team and play the Australian Schoolboys and Kiwi Schoolboys and bring them up together like a Club would?

Then you can introduce a Solid pairing in years to come whilst playing the old heads in the meantime.

It depends whether you want to play absolutely the best team to win now, or whether you have an eye on the future to blood people who can give you the best chance of winning the 4N and World Cup.

In my opinion they've got it right on Williams/McGuire - Williams is a talent who should be better for this experience. We'd benefit from McGuire's kicking game right now, but for Williams hopefully this will come.

England are better set-up for strength and depth at the moment than they've been since the early 90s. Just need the coach to make use of it.

FB Hardaker/Tomkins/Lomax
W Hall/Burgess/McGillvary/Briscoe
C Watkins/Reed/Percival/Sarginson
HB Widdop/Williams/Sutcliffe/Gale
P Graham/Hill/GBurgess/TBurgess/Walmsley/Cooper
H Roby/Hodgson/Clark
SR Whitehead/Farrell/Ferres/Ward/Bateman
LF SBurgess/Cuthbertson/O'Loughlin

Don't think that you will see Sarginson playing for England with him going to RU, and O'Loughlin will be to old for the test in 2017.

The Australian schoolboys team are 18 year olds, and have been beaten by the England academy on their last two or three tours over here.

What I'm getting at is, their should be a 2 tier system at International level to develop and bring through young talent without throwing them into Test Series or Tournaments playing with players they've never played with and against some of the best Athletes in the game.

In the last academy touring squad to Australia, Joe Burgess, Ben Currie and George Williams were present.

In the 2013 England Knights team Zak Hardaker, Tom Burgess, Josh Hodson, Brett Ferres and Elliott Whitehead all played.

The problem IMO is that we don't play enough International RL to bring players through, but that's partly due to the apathy of the average (I'm only interested in my club) RL supporter.

More to do with lack of teams. No one is really interested in us playing France or Wales or Samoa. They're only interested in playing New Zealand or the Aussies because the others just aren't good enough to get bothered about.

I've said it before, you can't have a serious and fuller international schedule when you really only have three teams in it at top level.

Which is why those are the kind of games that the England Knights or a similar second tier England side should be playing, while the England elite side are taking on the Aussies and Kiwis. Maybe pitch them as double headers, Knights v Wales as the warm-up, England v New Zealand/Australia as the main course.

Gets the next generation of young players used to the international setup, being away in camp, learning new structures alongside players from other clubs.

I agree, but somehow we have to get speccies through the gates to fund it, and that is a major problem.

On a positive note I've just been told that there are only about 5K tickets left for Saturday, and only around 3K for the game at Wigan. Anything close to two sellouts would be great news.

It's more important & better for the game to sell out the Olympic Stadium.
The problem as ever is cost when the end of the season is the most expensive time for those supporters of the top teams with the expense of cup semis & the final, followed almost immediately by the cost of the play-offs & the Grand Final.