Player performances

Lomax - mostly fine, but will justly have nightmares about that horrible missed tackle. Looked lively, but lacked support when he took on the line.
McGilvray - Our MoM for me. Looked committed and keen. Good tackling, solid runs.
Watkins - Picking on past form has occasionally worked, but Watkins is continuing the shocking, disinterested form of his Leeds season. Needs to be dropped.
Sarginson - Nowhere near the player he was two seasons ago. Along with Watkins, the weakest part of the team. At least one needs to change.
Hall - Anonymous first half. Much better the second half. Needs to come in more like he used to do for Leeds.
Widdop - lovely touch for Hall's try, and great goalkicking. But he seems incapable of creating anything much.
Gale - I was disappointed with Gale. He's such a mercurial halfback, and I fully supported his inclusion in the side. But that was not an influential performance.
Graham - as normal. Should have been captain.
Hill - seemed to be determined to offload no mater what early on, but looked effective. I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would prefer the Burgess twins to him
Hodgson - nice touches. Like watching a young James Roby with a better short-kicking game.
Sam Burgess - Not a captain. Looked a bit knackered towards the end. Don't make him think. Just let him run and hit people.
Burgess twins - Big, largely pudding-like performances. Not sure what they added which a range of English props couldn't have done.
Bateman - not the first guy who rips it up in SL, only to be found too small for a forward in international rugby league. Dominated, and died with the ball far too often.
Whitehead - did bits. Didn't stand out. But didn't cock up badly either.
Cooper - see Whitehead
Clark - didn't get on early enough, and when he did run, the England forwards were too knackered to go with him.

Tactics

Just a bit boring. Classic Bennett, in that it was all about territory. I didn't see any obvious plays which looked like training paddock jobs.

Performance

Forwards did their bit. But the halves didn't direct effectively, or threaten the line. The wingers offer potential, but until we solve England's decades-old problem of having no centres who can perform internationally, our wingers will be starved of ball. Lomax was steady, but while his crafty attacking play might work at Saints in SL, we need a bigger, faster fullback to add genuine threat to the backline. Not much brainpower in the England side, as we saw in the final couple of sets. A real lack of direction about the pitch. Needs a mature brain like Brown for that.

Prescription

I'd drop Lomax for Ratchford, who's faster. I'd lose Sarginson AND Watkins for Percival and Ward. Brown should replace Widdop or Gale (but Bennett isn't going to drop an NRL player, so it'll be Gale). Pick a Burgess twin, and swap him for Taylor.

I don't see us beating the Aussies unless they have a very bad day. Ho-hum. Another false dawn.

If Ratchford and Brown are the solutions we're screwed.

Matty Smith + George Williams in the halves we'd win the game IMO.

Our centres are very poor at this level....

Our props stood up, our wingers did too, half backs were half and half, widdop some good kicking and positional play but seemed to have a different script to the rest, Gale some awful defensive reads but some good distribution, Hodgson good distribution but NZ owned the ruck, Clark came on too late and at that time at the end where we had them both on we seemed to lose our shape. Our centres were shocking and our FB and second row meh. We had no speed in the side.

I'm amazed at how much messing about at the play the ball they were allowed to get away with. If a SL side had tried that they would have been yellow carded so why we're NZ able to get away with it?

Best team won. Enough said!

We lack the match winning class in the halves, we just don't have a Johnson, Cronk or Thurston. That is the difference and no amount of chopping and changing will alter that fact. On the whole we have a good team, i would stick with it but if Thurston and Cronk are on against us in two weeks we will suffer like we did today against Johnson.

McGillvary looked very good, and Lomax was generally OK. I'm not convinced that Ratchford would be an improvement on him. Agree the centres should go. Any of Percival, Ward, even Bateman would be an improvement. Widdop had one of his better England games i thought, interception aside. As Roy says, Bennett won't drop Widdop for Brown (unfortunately), and although Gale didn't do that much, he doesn't deserve to be discarded after one game.

As many on here claim that the p-t-b is so much faster and cleaner in the NRL than in SL, it's funny that that doesn't seem to have rubbed on the Kiwis, who all play there.

Aside from the wingers, our backs were found very much wanting. An international team containing Sarginson, Watkins, Gale and Lomax? Give me strength... And for a 'quality NRL player', Widdop lacked any element of creativity. If hes in there to control the game, then surely George Williams as the creative option would've made more sense.

I thought overall our forwards kept us in the game, although i expected a lot more from the Burgess twins and also Mike Cooper. Thought Hodgson did well also.

And surely England should do what Canberra do: if they want to try a scooting dummy half, don't take Hodgson off.

You are talking utter poo.... Matty Smith should be nowhere near the squad and rightly so, shocking player and very over rated, i have never seen him have a excellent game. He always looks as though he is just going through the motions.

Two of Kiwis tries came from errors by Graham - maybe you need to take those red fee glasses off

Absolutely bang on.
Very poor policing of the ruck by Hicks, the Kiwis were getting away with murder.

Ultimately the game could have been drawn
2 excellent positions to set up a drop goal, the first one blown by spilling possession (which should have been a warning) and then the Burgess through the legs forward pass, when we could have set up the DG.
NZ end f set plays certainly left us with heaps of defence and generally we coped well with that but, they just about deserved the win.