Their Australian counterparts are without doubt better players. The biggest single reason for this is their ability to perform when it matters. They make the right decisions and come up with far fewer errors.

This is a mental thing. Our players have a very good skill set and are fantastic athletes, we need to learn to stay composed and maintain concentration for 80 mins. IF we can do that we have every chance

whitehead has been the invisible man!

but even this super star sam burgess has not had a decent game for england since the last world cup

3 or 4 players can hold there head high right now.. they rest need to up their game asap

then again...we are still on track and still in with a chance of being world champs!

He should be nowhere near the centre. He's eating up the ground like a good back rower should and is so much more comfortable defending further in.

To be fair if you dropped those three into any of the teams in the QFs they wouldn't be far off wining the whole competition

There were some very good individual performance. Mcgillvary was excellent again and linked up nicely with Watkins. Roby looked superb again when he came on. Widdop and O'Loughlin also were good. I don't know why there were so many simple errors today - maybe just a bit of complacency causing a lack of concentration at times. We defended well though and I never felt worried about the result. Hopefully we'll have enough to beat Tonga next week. Then we'll have to try and put together a one off great game to have any chance of beating Australia in the final. We need something like what NZ did in the 2008 final.

Burgess hasn't been the same since his return from Yawnion. In fact the error rate of all 3 brothers is horrendous and has certainly cost Souths a fair few games recently. None of them seem able to hold on to the ball, and when they do they often go for the offload that isn't on.

I'm starting to wonder if Sam's errors cost the team more than he offers. He's such a great player it's maddening to watch.

That sort of error and completion rate against Samoa or Australia will kill us. As Noble said, do it boring at times. Execution and possession.

I think having Sam Burgess at second row is also stopping Hall getting quality chances, that pass that ended up in touch would probably have gone to Hall's hands if it was Currie or SO'L, at second row (or Ward, Ferres or Farrell for that matter).

Also our halves seem much more willing miss pass behind Whitehead than Burgess, although that is not his fault.

Yeah, if it wasn't for Sam Burgess we'd win this world cup.

now where have I heard that before......

With Jermaine McGillvary doing the business for his club for many years and now looking the part at international level, it's time for him to dump the Giants and make the step up to a Big Club.

On the downside:

Completion rate was terrible. If we do the same again we'll get smashed by Tonga, let alone Australia. Bennett has noted mistakes as England's achilles heel and he's right. They are awful, unforced errors.

Bateman is so far from being a centre its not funny. Its not his fault but he has no idea how to set up Hall, and that long break in the first half would have led to a try if he'd been a centre as well - he should have seen that Mead was trying to crowd Gale and got closer to him to leave the short pass on. Instead he stayed wide leaving Gale with a far riskier pass to make. For once Gale made the right decision. Percival for me.

Gale offers too little - he seems to have no idea when to run and when to pass unless its a planned move. Personally I'd move Hodgson to 7 and play Roby.

We sometimes move the ball crisply but Laurie Daley doubts our attack would cause Australia much trouble because its a bit one-dimensional - which I agree with. We need some alternative plays close to the line - particularly inside balls. We are trying to move the ball wide too often off a very slow PTB and stack one side or other with halfbacks meaning its obvious which way the ball is going and the defence is already set.

Pluses:

Our wingers look good as did Watkins. If we cut the errors out we can beat Tonga, who Lebanon showed up pretty badly I thought. We need to copy Lebanon's plan of moving the big Tongans around all game. Lebanon did it without being high risk as well - just players making themselves available to take a pass. Tonga were literally shot with 15 minutes to go against Lebanon.

It's interesting how one of Bennett's key things as a coach is not making mistakes and unforced errors yet we seem to be making more since he took over.

We had the highest completion rate in the tournament before the PNG game. It was at 80%.

I can't imagine Bennett will dump Gale and play Hodgson in the halves now, unless Brown is unfit. I just re-watched the game on the Aussie coverage, and Daley is right; most of the tries we scored, we would not have scored against the Kangaroos. He still gave us more chance than the rest of the panel, though!