Totally agree with the 11, 12 & 13 our best players! However we did get out muscled in the forwards! Oz made much more yards up the middle and knocked us back in defence a fair bit! We looked better when moving the ball through hands but did think our 3/4 line was pretty poor with some bad decisions made!

Was a good close game though!

Anyone shed light on the reason we played 17 year olds against Australia's 18/19 year olds?

The entire team was all under 17's so that they could build a team for the tour down under next summer. Winning in Australia is the goal and the best way about going about that is to have as consistent team up until that point. Pointless having a team with ten 18 year old's in if they can't tour next summer.

If these lads are all a year or two younger than the AIS, surely a 2 point loss is a good result?

How did Cunningham go? no 9.

The entire team was 17 and under, many were 17-18 age band ie under 18's in old money.

Majority of the team have played at under 18's level all last season (some for under 20's and even 1st team if good enough), so most actually over 17 if not all! But then this would make most of them, over 18 next summer!? So what age group is it that tours?

was going to mention this then you did ! there must av been at least 10 players who are in there last year ov un 18s and move on to un 20s next season , so for everybody inc the rfl to bill it a un17 team is totaly wrong !

England had four players in their team who played under 16's this past season.

so would it be right to say there was only 4 un 17 players in a full england side billed as a un 17 team then ?

You can be 17 and still play under 17s IIRC.

Of course there may be a lot of 17 year olds that play U20s too. For example John Bateman has played a lot of U20s despite being 17, plus he's played a handful of 1st team games too.