Bateman was oustanding today. We need a stand off badly and Widdop us not the solution. He's played very well at full back but he's awful at stand off.

I thought Chris Hill and James Graham were our outstanding players today, Bateman was very good at keeping hold of the ball.

And nullifying Halls attacking potential.

Im not sure whether hes not fully fit or whether hes constrained by Wayne but to me Currie has not been as creative as we know he can be. Maybe he's more suited to SL than this percentage rugby.

Absolutely right, it is risky, but the alternative is the same old same old.
We didn't see much unstructured stuff from England, except maybe right at the death, but its the only way to turn over the statistic grind, chucking in a spanner that a calculator cannot make provision for.
Its either that, or play their game, win lose or draw it'll be dull, made watchable only by the virtue of closeness of the final score.
I don't really want to watch that kind of game, its a stat race with little scope for the unexpected.
Everybody goes on about the NRL being superior to SL, but from a spectators perspective it just isn't, its a dull war of stats with nothing between them at the end, or a get in front and shut up shop job, there is no feeling that anything could happen, no anticipation of the unexpected.
Just go back to the Tonga game, could that have happened had they been playing Oz, no, and it would have been less of a game without it, we got none of that till it was too late, that's what I (as a spectator) want to see, not 80 mins of mm measuring and completed set counts.

One thing I did notice right from the start of the WC was that we didn't have an equalizer, no x factor somebody that could make something out of nothing, McGillvaray looked like the only ticket through their first line on kick returns and first man up broken play, everybody else was rock solid steady dependable, no wildcards, that is the direction we are moving with Bennett.

I don’t think he’s 100%. Someone said the reason they haven’t put him at centre is because they’re worried his knee won’t be able to handle the more lateral movements.

All this talk about people want to see an expansive game, Rugby League isn't like football where you've got hundreds of tactics and game plans. You can either offload or you can pass before contact; you can only offload if you've won the contact and you only pass the ball into space if you've created space in the first place - inevitably, the only way that happens is if you win the play-the-ball. Defences are so well organised now and against Australia and NZ, you aren't going to be able to just throw the ball about. Add to that, he only has a small amount of time with the players and it takes months to change the habits players have at club level.

He can only work with the players he has. England's weaknesses (and it's been the same for I don't know how long), is the half backs. There wasn't a shortage of field position but the difference was Australia's ability to build and maintain pressure consistently. Luke Gale kicking on play two for a back rower is an off-the-cuff piece of play but it completely let them off the hook and relieved all the pressure - are people happy with that or does Bennett have a point about England's weakness?

Put a quality half and a quality centre in there today and England win for me. England are a much better team than they were 12 months ago IMO and Bennett has only had a mid season test against Samoa in between then and the World Cup and straight away he's improved the England defence (the main thing for me), if we can keep him for the next few years, hopefully he'll be able to build on that and improve our attack. He knows what it takes to win big games. But, he needs time with the players and if he stays for the next 4 years, I think we'll be in a good position.

A bigger question IMO is his assistant coaches.

To me, some of Bennett’s selection decisions are bizarre.
Bateman in the centre was an abject failure. Did he pass to his winger once? He’s solid enough in defence, but we need more firepower in that position. I don’t think he ever look like an attacking threat.
Kevin Brown. How on earth he was selected over Sneyd I just can’t fathom. His club form this season was awful.
However, the most baffling selection was Tom Burgess. Bennett’s methods are based on minimising errors, yet he selected the player most likely to make errors.

Wayne Bennett is now 67. He will be 71 at the time of the next World Cup. I cannot imagine that he will still be coaching then.

Hahahahahahaha

Regards

King James

This. It's not Bennett dropping ball, making terrible kicks and the wrong decisions. We need players who can do the job and if the ones in the squad can't then they need replacing.

It also means players like Williams and Percival really need to up their games if they want to feature down the line.

As an aside, I'd love to know what Betts and Anderson bring to the team.

Wasn't Bennett meant to eradicate those things? Other coaches have been criticised for their failure to beat says and NZ and at the end of the day Bennett is 0-4 against them. All he's done in my eyes is found a different way to lose to Australia, we may not ship as many points against them but matters little if the attack is as poor as it's been.

I do on that final point. Personally, I'd have liked to see what a Bennet/ Powell combo could have done at this WC. Bennet obviously knows his defensive structures and maybe Powell would have got more points out of the backs. Too late now though.

Bennett's successful coaching has come off the back of a good defence for 80 mins and a good pivotal spine at 1, 6, 7 and 9. I,ve been very critical all year with our England Coach, but I can see where he is coming from over the last 2 games, a high completion rate via minimum amount of errors puts you in a winnable position against the best teams.
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He's been critical of the Superleagues lack of skills and intensity for quite a while now, more has to be done on English Soil to raise the standard of the game, for 30+ games we play pretty much arm wrestle style with dumb plays, I don't think Bennett can "flick a switch" to get all the players playing one particular NRL style type of rugby, its got to be done in our own back yard before we can fine tune for future international competition.

England made a lot of errors today but still competed. That's real progrsss. The fact we ain't got players to fill a couple of key positions is all that cost us. Bennett can't do anything about that.