Australia have been better all across the field.

EVERYWHERE

Hence the big blow out scorelines against England recently.

For 30 years?

OK mate.

Thurston didn't play when Australia hammered England out of sight in the World Cup to the tune of 52-4.

Must have been Scott Prince that produced the platform instead then, eh?



Or more accurately, the Australian forwards produced the platform for Scott Prince and sundry Australian backs to do what the hell they wanted and run England and their forwards ragged? Even Anthony Laffranchi bulldozed over for a couple of tries.

You are blinkered and clueless BTW.

Scott Prince was superb that day

That's why I've argued we need more players in the NRL. Hopefully with Burgess, Ellis and Morley we can start to compete in the pack a little better than we have. The quality of the work those three do will stand out a lot compared to the others I suspect.

Every time England come over we are told how great the pack is, and the thing is, individually I sort of see it. What gets ignored is the quality of what they do as a unit.

They don't miss many tackles out wide because they can't get there. The inside defence is lazy in the extreme. Some of the gaps on the inside are so big that when an Aussie runs through them the statisticians probably didn't count it as a missed tackle because there was nobody there to make one. They similarly do very little to help either the backs out wide or other forwards up the middle by dummy runs or making up the numbers in the line. In all those respects the Aussies as a unit are miles ahead of England/GB.

England's backs get a lot of stick - and rightly so at times - but the fairytale that England's pack will smash Aus/NZ is just that.

England will go better with the addition of the better Smith brother to the coaching ranks.

This helps remedy some of the deficiencies in solely Steve M coaching the team.

Good sign...

England will win 3 games - and I include the final in that.

Looking at the schedule I think;

Round 1 - England lose to NZ, Aus beat PNG

Round 2 - England beat Aus, NZ beat PNG

Round 3 - England beat PNG, NZ beat Aus

Eng vs NZ final, with Eng winning.

Aus are seriously weakened by their missing players - their forwards aren't as good as the other packs, and whilst the backs are better than the other two I don't think they are good enough to make up the deficiencies in the forwards. In previous years the likes of Lockyer/Inglis/Falou/Thurston have managed to carve open any defence and get the team on the front foot. The forwards haven't and wont in 2010.

NZ have the strongest squad, and I expect them to go unbeaten until the final.

There arent enough emoticons to describe how I felt when I read that post

But Ill give it a go.

The Aussie pack isn't as good as the other two, so whose going to get them going forward, or break the line?

The crims won't make the final.

We'll sneak past PNG and get a shoeing by NZ and Austrailia to be honest.

Game 1 - ENG 10-38 NZ
Game 2 - ENG 8-36 AUS
Game 3 - ENG 22-24 PNG

we will get beat in every game