I think Roby has struggled a little in this series. He lacks sharpness & I wonder if he is either tired or carryong an injury because his performances in the play-offs & GF were also below his high standards. Sinfield has been great in this tournament at hooker, but when he switched to 13 wasn't as effective again? Think this shows he is better organising the team around the ruck. Cameron Smith is recognised as the best now & he does excactly the same for Melbourne & Australia, so it isn't a bad template to follow.

I thought England were great last night & I was really proud of what they achieved by beating a very good Kiwi side. However, Australia will be made up that they've got us because it takes England too long to score points. We had loads of pressure on both Australia & New Zealand last night and still only got over for less than 20 points in each game. Australia can simply go 100m in 12secs were as it takes us loads of repeat sets & penalties to get over.

I dunno mate, I remember a bad pass from Sinfield, and a bad pass from Shenton (IIRC) in the dummy half role which I immediately attributed to Sinfield when I don't think it actually was him.

Was it the one where the dummy half was about 5 or 10m from the Kiwi line, and roughly in the centre of the pitch, then cobbed a rubbish pass about 5m behind the first reciever? It looked like a planned move, but either the first receiver was simply in the wrong place or the pass was pants?

Edit - I'm worried I've got this bass-ackwards now - I was rather drunk watching the game!

Yeah, the ball went from the middle(ish) of the pitch out to the right, behind all the players and Briscoe ended up getting tackled about 25m out. (IIRC)

Its not essential to my point though, so I don't want to dwell on it and and sound like I'm bagging Sinfield.

Gaah, this is going to really bug me until I get to watch a repeat of the match now!

Sinfield. Stevo commented upon it at the time. Whether Shenton threw a bad one or not I don't know, but the Sinfield one was obvious.

As for Sinfield at hooker, Rogues, I haven't denied he played a good game there. In fact, even on the Leeds board - and this is rare for me - I have praised him for his game at hooker. He should play there again on Saturday. However, Roby has his role and his distribution and passing generally was fine at the weekend. He also made good yards. One example that springs to mind is when Crabtree did an amazing offload from inside a tackle of about five Kiwis strong. Roby read it, was there, and SCOOTED about 15 yards up field. Every member of a team has a role to play and so long as they are playing that role with commitment and to the best of their ability, I don't see how they can be criticised. Nor should they be.