Agree with much of that. Tomkins must have touched the ball half a dozen times in attack. We have too few creative players as it is without excluding arguably our greatest attacking threat.

One particular bugbear of mine is when the likes of JJB, Morley etc have to fill in at dummy half which, in short, fecks up the gameplan up. It lead to incidents such as Ellis being left to kick on the last tackle and in particular JJB's inexplicable decision to pass on the blindside from dummy half on his own 10m (immediately after the Sinfield penalty?) that brought an inevitable knock on.

I think England throughout the 4Nations have been making excellent progress. We defended well on the whole and the pack worked brilliantly, for once our pack was on par with Australia and NZ.

But when we are in the opposition 20 we have no idea. Australia in that position equals a try or a continuation of pressure. We just mess up on the first or second tackle and let them off the hook. Sinfield was truly woeful tonight, absorbing all the attacking responsibility and showing his lack of creativity and vision by popping impossible lateral passes to players who had never been good options.

If England had Lockyer and Thurston in our halves, we'd have won the tournament. That is the challange for the World Cup, finding a half back combination.

I more or less agree - except I think in the recent past our pack have dominated Oz's on the whole - although Pietro C always saved the day for them. Big Sam was awesome for them tonight.

gotta agree with sinfields kicking game being awfull , but having said that you cant beat the best team in the world without a recognised scrum half

watched the game with bro and yes, Australia could have scored more.

England's structure was all over the place, looked a complete mess when attacking Australia. Sinfield Kicking game was awful tonight. His kicking game in general is not good enough!

The half back partnership of Sinfield and Chase doesnt work when utilising Sam Tomkins as an attacking fullback. If you watch how the plays were set up for Wigan under Maguire, Deacon/Leuluai/Finch pass the ball outwide using dummy runners to allow Sam to join the line at pace picking out gaps in the defensive line. These opportunites rarely present themselves for England which results in him hardly touching the ball in a decent attacking position.

Also he's usually much better under the high bomb, he should have done better under a couple today but in his defence I would say he was offered very little protection from other players putting pressure on the chasers who were closing down very quickly.

Looking at the Australians for a moment, it saddens me to see how the slick 'green machine' has fallen apart this last few years. At least when they used to beat us their play was efficient, clinical and stunning to watch. Now its generally a shambles.

What?

Some of the above I agree with, the biggest difference tonight was the finishing of sets - particularly the kicking.

However, I think Chase is a keeper who asks questions of defence and we had much more go forward when he was on and taking control. Look at the previous matches too, we just need a decent player to compliment him. Sam had a bit of a dodgy night, it happens. Ditto JJB who has been good enough in the previous matches. We do need some younger props/forwards as I think Morley and Peacock aren't able to keep up with the pace of the game after a while. I dont think Widdop is good enough either, we went backwards when he attempted to take control.

Overall I do think it's looking good, much improved over recent years. The potential is there, even Lockyer acknowledged as much post-match.

We were like rabbits in headlights sometimes with ball in hand. It was like panic stations whenever we gained any field position.

Neither our attack or defence looked structured in any way.

did we actually watch the same match ?

the aussies were well organised,efficient and stronger man for man in every position - as Carney said,the level of SL must improve in order to provide the competitiveness for places in the England team to have any chance of competing with clearly superior opposition

Saying that,I thought Jack Reed was great for the future of England RL and the English Man of the Series for me - on the down side,if Chase was MOS last season then the SL is truly in dire straits...