Team announced for weekend -

Widdop

McGillvary

Watkins

Bateman

Hall

Brown

Gale

Hill

Hodgson

Graham

Whitehead

S Burgess

O'Loughlin


subs -

Roby

Walmsley

Burgess

Currie

apart from the hooking role which I would have reversed and centre which is very debatable, I think he has picked as good a team as he could have at this stage.

The best thing that can happen for everyone involved will be if PNG play the game of their lives and give England a real contest.
No one will get anything out of a glorified training run.

Apparently, Bateman has pictures of Wayne Bennett doing strange things with small animals.

It’s the only explanation for that continued selection.

Percival for Bateman and I'd say that would be the best team to put out. Debatable about Roby starting, but happy to have his impact off the bench as and when needed.

He is obviously now going to stick with Bateman in LC, I assume simply for his defensive abilities, but I would really have liked to have seen him go with Percival there at least for this one. We have one of the best finishers in World rugby near the line in Ryan Hall but Bateman does not posses the centre skills or vision to give him enough time or space to work with so he is pretty much redundant in attack. Again, I like Bateman the back rower but a centre he is not and never will be.

Totally agree.
Batemans passing "skills" seem very limited.
You cant deny his willingness to work but, he lacks the ability to play as an international centre, scoring against France just doesnt count.
Also I would start Roby, to try and get us on the front foot.
He has been head and shoulders above Hodgson.

A certain try he would more than likely have bombed for us if it was against the top teams who would have covered his crap dummy and go when his winger was free. That right there summed it up for me. If we create a great chance like that in a massive game down the line, and these chances will be few and far between at that point, this is where we will pay as the top teams will now know what Bateman can and obviously can't do in that role, he is easy to read.

Bateman offers a very good workrate and low errors I suppose. I can only assume Bennett thinks that is worth the trade off. It is very frustrating to waste such a good winger though by not being able to get him the ball early in space. Glad that Heighington hasn't come back in, shows Bennett isn't blindly selecting all the NRL players, as he has been accused of.

You don't really pick centres for their workrate and low errors though do you? It's an incredibly negative selection at centre. He should be in the backrow.

Bateman's defence didn't look that great versus Australia and you can bet they'll be winding him up to give some cheap penalties away - I can't help but think he's daft enough to get caught out like that.

Should have been Percival at left centre.

Agreed, I would have Percival at centre, just trying to think why Bennett seems so settled on Bateman. People generally talk about his aggression as a benefit, but at you say, he isn't a smart player. He's cost Wigan at least a couple of games I can recall by getting himself sent off at pivotal moments in tight games. Having said that, memories of Watkins letting Cronk push him around like a school bully early on last year at London still haunt me.

Percival is too small for international rugby league

Regards

King James

He's far too slow and because of it runs at the man instead of running to create a gap, Bateman just wants to frustrate the opposition in attack and defence by locking into an arm wrestle. Quite a few times when he is tackled on the floor he wraps his arm around the legs of an upright tackler, it just ends up with a very slow PTB and any momentum is lost.
There has been no difference whatsoever between Bateman and Percival on defensive performance so far, in attack Percival has 4 times more tackle busts than Bateman (127/33) this season but I don't think this has any value at all under Bennett.

Spot on

Well summed up.

The team's pretty exactly what I thought Bennett would go with and apart from a couple of places is what I'd have gone with. He obviously see's something in Hodgson starting over Roby that I haven't, but hey who am I. For me though the attack is so obviously much more fluent & quicker with Roby, who also makes the right decisions more often than not. His defence and the rate of it is also better than Hodgson's as well for me.

Other than Percival for Bateman. Would have liked to have seen Taylor on the Bench.

Agree with someone's comments about Roby off the bench and his impact. Biggest problem i have is when him and Hodgson are on together. That's when Hodgson just seems to get in the way.