Quote: BrisbaneRhino "Evn if England get a big advantage up the middle, its no easy thing to score against Australia out wide. Whatever combination England pick the Aussie backrow is simply superior.
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Scott and Hoffman were really quite awfull against New Zealand, you're doing the English players a real disservice to suggest that they're so inferior to this current Australian back row.
I'm not suggesting that Farrell and Tomkins are the best back row pairing we've ever seen but they certainly have a lot to offer going forward and in Farrell case at least his defensive game is superb.
What did Bird do that was so much better than Westerman?
Bird gave at least 2 midfield penalties away and got brutalised on a couple of occasions when trying to effect a tackle. On the other hand Westerman made some hard yards through the middle and was close to being at the top of the tackle count.
Some on here are still suffering from an inferiority complex where Australia are concerned, while there's been solid justification in the past I simply don't see the reason for it with this version of Australia.
