Or England's lack of wins against Australia could have coincided with Slater, Inglis, Hodges, Thurston, Cronk, Smith, Thaiday etc. becoming regular members of the Kangaroo team. Also coincided with Queensland dominating State of Origin for 7/8 years (can also throw Lockyer into that mix).

Great point.and the Kiwis are as strong as I can ever remember.

Beat me to it. A quick glance at some of the NZ teams that Noble "masterminded" victories against makes for interesting reading. They are simply not even close to the current team.

Biff,

Where do Noble's teams stand against the current one? Could the same advancements be said for England as were for the NZ teams? Genuine question, not looked at the teams Noble lead out.

The current team is stronger overall, no doubt about that. But those teams still contained players like Farrell, Sculthorpe, Morley, Peacock etc etc. That's why comparing results of different coaches against the "same" teams a difficult one, and why the earlier suggestion that Noble is 3 times the coach that Mcnamara is because he won more games against Australia and NZ is just daft.

That's what I though might be the case. It's like comparing players today from the game in the 50's and 60's. It can't be done, you are only as good as the time you played in/coached in and to that you can only measure against your peers at the time. So whilst McNamara's record is not good against Aus and NZ it has risen over the seven games from being absolute hidings to being quite close against NZ and improved against Aus.

I would love to see how it measures against an Aus side that has been in camp for a few weeks though, that would be a better acid test than the first game of the tournament. Same with England mind, they looked very sharp against NZ and that was after several weeks together and after jettisoning the Maori.

As I said on the Leeds board. The international calendar works out quite well for us.

McNamara and his team were 20 seconds away from giving us a World Cup final, had we made it and put up even a good performance against Australia I don’t think people would be calling for his head.

Next year we have a 4 nations comp. We should try and use everything we have learned throughout this world cup to go hell for leather to win that comp, win an international series and get that monkey of our backs. If McNamara fails in the 4 nations, get rid.

Then whoever we employ would have a full GB tour in 2015 to try out players and combinations, use 2016 to perfect them for the next WC in 2017.