Its not what id of gone for but not a bad team selection, 4 forwards on the bench and 1 in the backs. Mcnamaras clearly trying to out muscle them which is probably our best chance seen as we dont have the skills to match them.

Kicking could be a problem, Is Ryan Hall injured?

It all boils down to how small fry League is over here. All but a few irrelevant towns in the North of England, plus tiny pockets in London don't play the game. Even in the areas where league is established, it is firmly behind football.

I would love to see actual, genuine participation numbers. I bet England are sub 10,000 in terms of players genuinely playing the game on an ongoing basis. (Not including the 6 or 7 figure numbers the RFL would roll out based on them playing once in school).

The genuine sports stars in this country never even consider league. They would perhaps in Australia. Players like Greg Inglis and Billy Slater do exist in this country, they just try to play football until they are 18 and then turn to a non sporting life. I can see it happening at my son's school. There are two kids in his year who are utterly superb athletes. Monster kids that at 8 years of age are in size 6 adult shoes. They are all cleaning up at football at the moment, the star players on their weekend and school teams. They're not particularly talented, but being so big, strong and quick they dominate the dweeby kids they are with. They wouldn't even consider rugby league and are already being pushed towards trials with the big football teams.

Until we sort things like that out, we can never expect to fill SL academies with anything other than the sparrow legged runts we see now. I imagine the average intake for a SL academy being an Ian Hardman figure, painfully thin and very weak physically. Playing league either because of a direct family link or because they aren't good at football. Compare with the NRL where their reserve grade players are largely big strapping lads. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that when you whittle it down to the few that make it, we are going to fall short when the input into the system is so poor.

That one sentence sums up why we as a sporting nation, will never ever produce decent sportsmen and women on a major scale.

I suggested as much after the NZ game , but O'Loughlin isn't quick enough to do it , Roby,Robinson or Tomkins should have that job , they dont have to actually tackle him [ well first time they do