I'm old enough to remember when we had players who (Offiah excepted) were better than the ones you listed. In the era you have highlighted Connolly was a key figure - Oz used to rip us apart through the centres then Connolly came along and was rock solid on one side. He was the most important member of the team in that era. Although he did receive some acknowledement it wasn't as great as it should have been.

Should he Go and will he go are completely different things.

Should He? Yes
Will He? I personally dont think so

Did you ever see someone like Steve Norton? There's a great clip of him on that video sharing site that shall not be named. You may see what I mean.

The last world cup semi between wales and australia at huddersfield proved that pride in your shirt goes along way.wales led the aussies by 16 pts at h.t.Wales were mostly part timers with even a player from Swinton on the team sheet. guts and determination put the fear of god into the aussies whose full-time fitness and a lot of help from Russel Smith finally saw them move into the final.but there again wales had a organiser at half-back.England dont posses one.

Its the worst Ive ever seen

For me it's simple.

The reason we are so far from the Aussies is because there aren't enough quality players.

The reason we failed to compete with either Aus or NZ so spectacularly is because of Smith.

Yes, he should go.

The self assessment has to include everyone involved in this major failure.
The Players, Smith, The RFL and Lewis who after all is the captain of the fleet.

Heads out of sand time.
Time for honest, stark, frank assessment from top to bottom of the British game.
The rebuilding should begin tomorrow morning in the departure terminal at Brisbane Airport and only end when we are able to field quality British players throughout all our leagues.

Smith has to fall on his sword, he picked the squad, the squad got battered every game (I know we beat PNG.... only just)

He picks players on past reputation, the players only looked up for the fight ONCE in the whole tourament (when Wilkin had a little bit of handbags)

English coach for England... Ellery Hanley

He picked the form players from the form teams and other than 1 or 2 almost every fan agreed with the squad selected.

Smith made some pretty strange decisions regarding selection; Dropping Smith, retaining Calderwood, Wellens, Gardner, playing two 6's and two 9's in the 17, Wellens rather than Hock, only picking 4 props, etc.

However saying all that the players on the pitch were only 6 points off and could easily have levelled the game until the last 2 mins despite making more mistakes than I have ever seen in a test match.

THe fundamental problem however is not the coach - before the comp started almost everyone was sure that the likes of Pryce, Roby, Morley, Peacock were very good players.

We have to look at why players who look like worldbeaters at club level look like amateurs at internatonal level.

The MAIN reason is that we play a COMPLETELY different game in ESL than they do in the NRL (and therefore at International level due to the pathetic obsession to pandering to the aussies).

ESL rules reward the style of players who are superstars in our game.

The NRL does not.

The outcome is obvious. When we play to NRL rules, our superstars are not given a platfrom to peform and are therefore made to look ordinary.

When we play to ESL standards (World Cup Challenge) our superstars have the platform to display their unique style of skills and we show we can compete.

So,

the real issue is how we want to police and enforce our game which ultimately dictates how we will develop our game - do we want to develop a quick, speedy, entertaining thrills/spills, game or do we want to develop a more controled, technical, skilful game?

can smith share the blame ??

And if he was aware of this you would have thought he would have blooded more players with an eye to 2013.
But what does he do he says 'you are playing Leeds and you have played for Great Britain and wont be available in 2013 and have got slugged by the Aussies in the past so you're in and you are playing for Saints and you have also played for great Britain and wont be available in 2013 and have got slugged by the Aussies so you're in' etc etc

read Ricky Stuart b.b.c.co.uk/rugby league,totally agree with every word he says.

The thing is that 24 players left our shores with reasonable form and ability and confidence. When you can say only 4 players performed to a reasonable standard and the remaining 20 players didn,t, the fault has got to belong to Tony Smith.

I don,t know what has gone on over there, time will tell......but when you see a team play without any skill, passion, pride, "british bulldog" mentality, you wonder if the coaching of the national side is good enough.

For my team players St Helens, I,ve seen more errors by them in the world cup than the whole of superleague last year. So who is responsible for that.