You clearly didn't see the Hunters towards the end of the season. The Qld Cup teams had no answers to them early in the year, but by the end of the season had worked out how to play them - basically smash up the middle and kick to the corners for 20 minutes, followed by throwing the ball around. They should have lost the Qld Cup final, but managed to just hang on. Against Penrith they were beaten out of sight.

PNG have a huge number of errors in them and often fail to reach the end of a set with anything like a kick. For some reason everyone seems to ignore the fact that Ireland, a team with really very few quality players, stayed with them right until the end, even in the heat in Port Moresby. They did that by playing a simple attacking game, using their strengths in the forwards, and not missing tackles. The USA and Wales were by far the worst teams in the WC - really not great examples to show how good or bad PNG are.

Like I say, I love their style but any team with serious ambitions to winning the WC ought to smash them out of sight. If England make their tackles and don't drop the ball all over the field they should win by a fair margin. If we don't that says a lot more about England's lack of quality than how good PNG are. Can you honestly imagine any of the other quarter-finalists being beaten by PNG except possibly Lebanon?

Or they thought the job was done with 8 mins left and started to mentally clock off.

I opened the Times this morning expecting a decent write up.

Just 3 short paragraphs side snippets. Loads about union and cricket.

To be fair we'd lost Hodgson and Lockers, so it's hardly a surprise the players were blowing at the end. The bias from some of the media in the Sth hemisphere is ridiculous, especially in the Australian TV coverage. Kimmorley et al are a joke.

with 7mins to go and 20-0 up there wasnt any pressure!!

maybe clocked off/got tired/great tongan last effort/miracle after that but left themselves too much to do in the end.

England are battered, bruised and exhausted now.. will give it a good go for the first 30mins next week then it will all take its toll and aussies will run loose i think