Cameron Smith was banging on about how glad he was to see Widdop on the bench rather than on the field. I'd drop him. He hasn't fit in the team from day 1. Moving Sinfield to dummy half to allow Roby a rest and get Widdop a game messes up our organisation. We need to have 2 hookers. You can leave Roby on, he's perfect used to playing with another hooker on the pitch - he did partner Cunningham after all.
Drop Mossop, Tom B, and Widdop and bring in Micky Mac, Graham and O'Loughlin.
That looks a better side for me.

I have to say the criticism of Tomkins for the first try seems incredibly harsh. The kick was beautifully placed, Inglis timed his arrival beautifully and is a ridiculous athlete. No full back in the world was getting a different outcome there. If I was being critical of the team then they perhaps needed to get more men in around that contest to try to seal off the ball. But it was as close to being un-defendable as you'll see.

Personally I'd rather people could park the club bias for five minutes every so often. Including you. Why would Sinfield take flak as some sort of revenge against the views of Leeds fans?

On a more personal note, can people please stop referring to "Micky Mac" as it makes me want to vomit.

Kthnxby

I think the main criticism of Charnley is his lack of urgency to react to that kick. Compare that with Billy Slater's effort in a similar situation.
I do agree though re Tomkins vs Inglis, only likely to be one winner there.
Compare Tomkins technique with Slater's raised knees in jumping to defuse bombs. Having said that, failing to deal with bombs is Slater's only slight flaw & that's solely due to his height.
But England need to learn from the NRL where the emphasis is kicking to Slater on his right side of the field not his left.
Easier said than done I appreciate.

No, he's blaming Charnley for putting the touch judge in a position where he had to make the decision.

A bit more urgency from Charnley and he would have got back to that ball with both feet well in play and given Robert Hicks (the same TJ who got a vital in-touch call wrong in the 2011 CC Final wasn't it?) no decision to make.

That Hicks got it wrong bears no relevance to Charnley's lack of effort to keep the kick in play.

There is sense in that though isn’t there? I appreciate the arguments in favour of continuity, but the way I see it there are two main arguments in favour of a bit of rotation,

Firstly to win this comp England need to play 6 matches in 6 weeks. That’s a decent amount of games to throw on at the end of a season. Some players may benefit from a bit of a rest .

Secondly, it keeps some of the back ups a bit fresher. Say Charnley goes down in injured a couple of days before the final. Would you want to throw Briscoe into a WC final without him getting a competitive run out in 10 weeks?

Also need to keep in mind that there may still be a couple of combinations he wants to look at. Which is fair enough. We don't play a huge number of friendlies like soccerballers.

Some players need game time (especially, I suspect the likes of Roby and Tom Burgess, who don't have huge minutes behind them). And we need a halfback partnership that works. Whih means committing to one and sticking to it, barring injury, from at least the Fiji match onwards.

Personally, I think your being far too generous, I would back Hardaker every time with that same scenario, or any other decent fullback. Granted he is much bigger than Tomkins, but still, the whole attempt at it was out of a childrens team.

I would have also backed Hardaker to stop the Morris try. Tomkins attempt there was really weak, easily stepped. And I don't say that with any bias, as I have seen Hardaker do it many times over last couple of years.

Tomkins however, looked great from an offensive point.

Im not so sure. We'll never know. But given a fair run (and actually Inglis arrived with greater momentum so it wasn't even that) Inglis leapt higher, is taller and bigger and stronger in contact. Caught under that high kick with Inglis baring down, a bigger guy (Hall, Monaghan etc) would have had a better chance, but the odds were much stacked in the attacker's favour. Especially when that attacker is probably the best in his position in the Aussie team I can remember since Mal Meninga.

On the Morris try, maybe a better tackle would have helped, but the defenders had a lot to do by that point, which had started with defenders being sucked in in the build up and were always going to be vulnerable to that step back in field as they rushed across. Morris is a very good finisher. Tomkins effort made it a bit easy for him, but he was always getting that down once he took the pass.

I was a bit 50/50 on that. I think Inglis was clearly the favourite to get the ball, think Tomkins could have made it a bit harder for him to take it so cleanly.

You misunderstand. I don't agree with the criticism of Sinfield and took it as the usual club bias. I actually came on the Leeds board to get a more balanced view of how people think he went but, lo and behold, saw exactly the same ludicrous 'blame apportioning' going on, albeit against Wigan players rather than Sinfield. My point was that the very people who were complaining about the disproportionate criticism of Sinfield were busy indulging in it themselves! Why are they surprised when fans of other teams do exactly the same. Kettle...pot an all that. However, I certainly wasn't suggesting that it was right or justified in any way.

As for Charnley, that is a ludicrous comment. He collected the ball and would have been able to return it comfortably had the linesman not made an error. In fact Ryan Hall uses exactly the same approach, as do many other players. My understanding is that it's so that they aren't returning the ball on the back of a hard 30 or 40 metre sprint back and, therefore, have a better chance to get round or break through the oncoming defenders. Whether you agree this is a better or worse tactic than sprinting hard and coming back at the defence with less energy is open to opinion but there's no proven right or wrong anyway. It's hardly as though he was ambling back! Either way to criticise him for a linesman's mistake is bordering on the ridiculous. Moreso, to put it forward as a reason for England losing! Actually, I said ''bordering on the ridiculous'; scrap that...it's gone over the border and is on it's way out the side!

Any critisism of sinfield is completely one eyed. Accross all the boards I have been reading how our weak half backs cost us the game (sinfield is too slow etc) most with this view clearly didn't watch the game and have a pre conceived idea of what the problem was. The only thing that cost England were the stupid penalties and dropped balls costing field position.

Personally my opinion before the WC began I would have had tomkins and sinfield in the halves and hardaker at the back. But other than that I would play sinfield and chase as I cannot see what all the fuss about widdop is about.

On sat I was impressed with George burgess and I was impressed with ferres. I was thinking he would be a penalty machine and not up to the job, but as I say he impressed me with his display

I think more than anything what cost us the game was that 3 of the 4 all-time great, world class players they had to call on (Thurston, Slater and Inglis) produced match-winning plays when they were most needed. Along with Cameron Smith who wasn't as good as he can be (but still very, very good) these players will at least stand mentioning in the same breath as the best I've seen in their positions in 25 years.

That we don't have players quite at that level is not the fault of the coach or the 17 players who played at the weekend.

I think you totally miss the point re Charnley. How I read the post was that to single out the usual 1 player is daft. Especially when its easy to pick fault at individuals. A lot have picked out Sini for no other reason than it is him or that a player can't be international class if they are not quick. There were others who stood out more so than Kev who made individual errors, but is it there fault? Not in my opinion. It's easy to point fingers. But ultimately errors and discipline cost us against a team with too much quality to give them that amount of free ball.

The one individual I'd pick on is Westwood. Comical errors and soft penalties galore, yet he's one of the players to have played most recently in a GF so no excuse for rustiness compared to others, and he's very experienced. Out of ten he'd be close to zero for me. It was the sort of performance people were worried about Hock making.