I think he's done a pretty decent job and is unfairly getting far too much stick.

We have played with structure yet been positive, the way we moved the ball around was great.

Yet again we were a number of very fine lines away where we could have won against both Aus and the Kiwis away from home.

I've seen far too many games in the past where we looked totally out of our depth.

For those who constantly carp about selection, he's shown he's more than capable of making difficult decisions and swapping players in or out. Look at Sarge, dropping Chase etc.

No one is ever going to agree with every decision a coach makes . I really don't think picking Whithead for exAmple would have raised our performances significantly last week.

The players selected made more than enough opportunities to win, it isn't as though we have a proven world beater who has been ignored.

The team has played pretty well this tournament but a few crucial judgement calls by McNamara could have been the difference. Choosing Joel Tomkins was a big mistake at this point, as was Ferres especially in the game against NZ where he was played at Dummy Half. I like Smith as a player. He works his socks off but I'm not sure he has enough at this level and it showed.

I'm no fan of McNamara but he's improved the side slowly. I still think he's gone as far as he can and it's time for someone else to step in and take them up another gear.

Personally I think he's done a great job, it probably is time for him to move on though.

As for the OP thinking that the answer to all Englands prayers is the Scottish player Brough, I'll ask him a question that I've never had answered by his fanboys. name me one single game of importance that he has shone in and his team won?

Brough has chosen to play for Scotland please please let's drop it

Challenge Cup game Vs Leeds at Headingley in 2012, he destroyed Leeds and eclipsed Burrow, McGuire and Sinfield who collectively couldn't match Brough

What round was it?

2013, at the John Smith's you mean?

5th I think, maybe qtr final stage.

Erm Leeds were in the final in 2012 so Brough can't have played that well

Why does it matter?

You asked someone to name an important match in which Brough had excelled, so I did!

Time to go? give it a rest! he is young the team is young the team is getting better & he is learning all the time. He has only just got the job started leave him to get it done & he can get us back to the top as we used to be. The only ones who want him gone are the people who where vocal against him from the start & can't except that he is coming good. We are now entering a phase where the coaching staff & players have come through from youngsters as full time profesionals let them get on with it & progress. None of the people mentioned are better than the current coach even if they wanted the job. For me he should be in place till at least the end of the 2017 world cup.

I think he' now doing a decent job with the players he's got available so I would probably stick with him until the world cup, he's had one or two selections not quite right but overall the balance of the team is looking a lot better than years gone past'
The loss against NZ I felt was more to do with our quality of players available, if we had a world class 1, 6 and 7 we would have probably have won all our games.

I agree it's time for new blood. McNamara has taken this team as far as he can take it. I'd say there are three areas where he has to carry the can for our defeats.

Selection

Of course nobody ever agrees with every selection decision, but there's an element about McNamara of "defaulting" to picking players on reputation (or competition), rather than picking on form or ability, I think. The selection of Widdop seemed based largely on the fact that he's playing in the NRL. The selection of Joel Tomkins seemed based on the fact that he was good before he went to RU. The non-selection of Hardaker especially, but also Charnley over Burgess, and Whitehead in the first two games, suggested a coach who was unsighted about the form of UK-based players. That's understandable for a man whose job is in Australia, but until we have ALL our best players in the NRL, we need a coach who is able to select the best players on form, not the best players on reputation, or the best players in the NRL.

Tactics

We've seen flashes of what England can do in this tournament when they actually throw the ball around. But most of the time on the field, the team has not played that way, preferring an ultra-conservative approach of five drives and a not-necessarily-very-good kick. Last week one could argue we allowed Australia back into the game by abandoning the expansive style we had played in the first half for a safety-first approach in the second. There was an element of that today as well. We looked much better when we actually moved the ball. However, I fear McNamara is a part of the generation of coaches who developed the percentages mentality of possession and conservatism, and expansive play does not come naturally to him. Either he coached the players not to throw the ball around too much, and they followed his instructions, or he was trying to get them to play more rugby, but they didn't. In both cases, the coach is culpable.

Ruthlessness

International coaches have to be ruthless, because you don't have a full league season to experiment and wait for someone's form or performance to improve. I think McNamara is ruthless off the field, and that's fine. But on the field he isn't. There were performances by certain England players which were simply not good enough, and should have resulted in changes. Obviously there are matters of opinion here, but Watkins simply did not do enough in his three games to justify his place. Widdop certainly didn't offer any significant threat from half-back to justify his spot, and while I think Sam Tomkins is a fantastic player normally, his form in this tournament has not been as good as Hardaker's form this year. You could make a similar case for Charnley needing to be dropped for Burgess after his first two anonymous games.



The team's performances were good. They were competitive. But I felt that with 15 minutes to go today, with New Zealand rocking, England looked like, more than anything, they lacked self-belief. There were several scrums where we should have been running to stop the clock, but we hung around. There were times when we gave George or Tom Burgess the ball on the fourth tackle to run a dead-ball hit-up, when we desperately needed to spread the ball. There was an atrocious kicking game from Smith which needed a tactics change from the coach. None of these things happened. At various points, it looked like the plan was simply to pass the ball to Sam Tomkins and hope he'd somehow perform a miracle. We looked like a team who believed they were going to lose, not a team who were ruthlessly going to win. Exactly the same as last week, when rather than hammer home our advantage over the Aussies, we stood back and expected to lose with fearful, expectant play.

Coaching is a harsh game, but while we can't change the entire team (and wouldn't want to - there are some very good players in there ), we clearly DO need a change if we are to get past what is now almost more a mental that physical obstacle in order to start winning those tight games, rather than inevitably losing them.

It matters because Brough and his side then went on got beat when it actually mattered didn't they.
Just like every other game when it actually mattered.

Compare Broughs attitude with Widdops. Widdop was happy to play a bit part and play ,'second fiddle' until his time came, Brough on the other hand wanted it his way or not at all, that to me suggest a Ayer that hasn't got the teams interest at heart, and the results of his teams proves that.

People go on about team selection but
1) no one wanted Sarginson but he turned out to be very good
2) lots said drop Hodgeson but Clarke wasn't as effective when he did
3) No one wanted Joel Tomkins and said it was rediculous Whitehead wasn't in but Whitehead was no better today

He can only play what he has. I'm sure he'd prefer Burgess not to go to RU, or Hock to have a brain or Hardaker to be more professional or Roby not to be injured or O'Loughlin to be fully fit for just one game.........but unfortunately, he isn't in control of that.
He went with what he had and I thought we played entertaining rugby and matched it with the big 2. Unfortunately we just missed twice.

BUT I've seen years worth of getting smashed by the big two and being soft and disorganised in defence. He has solved that issue.

I'd keep him.

Whitehead hasn't played for about a month and a half, McNamaras mistake was picking J Tomkins 3 weeks ago when he should have had Whithead in the team to give him some game time. McNamaras second mistake was playing Whithead today when he is out of match fitness, he'd have been better off picking Westerman who at least played 3 weeks ago.