Lets be honest, aside from O'Loughlin England don't posses a truly World class back rower right now.They are all good club and SL players no doubt but i dont see any of the current batch making waves at international level.Tomkins and Farrell were as good as we could have expected today and i dont think Whitehead or Ferres or Ablett or whoever else would have made anymore of an impact.

All this club biasness is getting quite tedious.

Farrell was the best back row for England again and was unlucky not to get a try assist for his kick at the end. At times he does struggle to make metres if there are several tacklers quickly on him and he's at a standing start but generally he's been making good ground and also getting a quick play the ball.

He shouldn't be banned for the alleged chicken wing. Inglis grabbed hold of him and kept hold of him. Farrell didn't deliberately twist the arm, he just fell on him as Inglis kept hold.

Tomkins and Ferres have offered very little though and have been quite disappointing. Tomkins is well off the pace and I'm surprised he's been selected. Ferres wasn't in particularly good form from what I saw at the end of the SL season. Whitehead is the form back row but his defence seems very dodgy when I've seen him and he seems prone to missing tackles. He also doesn't have the attacking work rate of Farrell or the likes of Ellis and Westwood from previous years although he does score plenty of tries from kicks.

I thought was very good today - very aggressive in defence.

The issue is Hodgson he is not up to this standard at the moment - his reading of the game is poor and he doesn't control the speed of the attack. Look at the difference Clark made when he was on the field

It was a chicken wing. Plain as day.

J.Tomkins should be dropped for either Whitehead or Westerman. Or I'd possibly even have Ratchford or Hardaker off the bench for an added attacking dimension, if O'Loughlin is fit enough to do 80 against Samoa.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Hodgson dropped as well and Clark doing the 80. Hodgson made 15 metres all game...

Again, before lauding Clark - he blew two tries.

Hodgson looked extremely poor today. I don't mind a hooker not creating constantly and posing a threat as long as they have good distribution and more importantly are solid and brutal in defence. Which he wasn't unfortunately.

Farrell had another good game. He won't often make a gap for himself although he does every so often with his quick feet. He needs someone to hit him when he runs his good lines, this is where Widdop has been lacking. He's not creating much.

Bit of naivety on his 2nd international appearance bit harsh if you ask me

True. But you don't need to blow that many before you're considered a liability. He has to realise this isn't SL. If he can't make that mental leap his international career will be short-lived.

At international level a back row should be able to offload, Farrel has no off load, he's not an international player for me, hopefully whitehead will step up

I much prefer Ferres, he's also knows how to get in to the oppositions faces in big games, he's developed in to an excellent backrower

Farrel didn't do him self any favours today. Being steam rollered inhis first tackle and having to resort to the chicken wing set the tone for the rest of his game. The disciplinary may help us out for the NZ game.
Whitehead in. Sorted.

Yep, he'll certainly be missing next week after "that" tackle.

No, he didn't.

On the first one, even if he'd passed, there was no guarantee that Widdop or Hall would have scored; the Aussies had defenders pouring across. (Given that we scored from the resulting penalty, can you blow a try that was scored anyway, ha ha)

The second occasion, Clark tried to offload whilst being tackled. Even if Widdop had gathered the ball, I would still expect him to be tackled by Cherry-Evans.

If you are going to criticize Clark's choices, on the first occasion, a pass would have created an opportunity, but it was a long way from being a certainty.

It wasn't a chicken wing. GI grabs a fist full of Farrell shirt and holds onto it with a straight arm trying to push Faz back. Farrell then turns him over while GI still keeps a straight arm hold on his shirt. If GI let's go of Faz there is no chicken wing.

He will get a ban because Moaning Timmy deems it so