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...

I agree but he plays them every week and so doesn't stand in awe of them as our players do, nor does he have the history with them that our players do.


Chase was chosen as MoS while playing at six, not seven. The bloke has had to take on a new role in his first international series. Had he had played at six with a seven alongside him who knows what he might have done? But Sinfield is not and never will be a six and I'm sick of thick coaches playing him there.

Which would come as no surprise to anyone who had suffered a McNamara "coached" team for three years.

Did we put any kind of move together across our backline last night? I can't honestly remember one - our attacking "strategy" seemed to involve getting quite near the Aussie line and hoping something might happen, rather than have any kind of plan to make something happen.

I thought every ‘English’ player, played well below their best. There wasn’t one who has a stand-out game, or a real stinker.

Compare that to the Aussies, Gannon was immense, Thaiday was like a ranging bull giving the halves time to control the game.

it was great to watch Thaiday that first half,he was absolutely immense.

I'd add players here playing too many games (that was Kevin Sinfield's 42nd or 43rd game this season and it'll be interesting to see how many of last night's team will be expected to turn out for their club sides in 5 or 6 weeks' time for meaningless Xmas/New Year friendlies) in a competition with too many clubs for the available talent, leading to too many uncompetitive games.

Ryan hall, tomkins, graham the stars for us in the four nations

time for new blood in the front row...morley and peacock to go in time for world cup....crabtree, mccarthy scarsbrook, mossop to come in??

sinfield and chase dont work.... no kicking game for england...bring brough in to fix this (he was in the squad but actually got injured in training so had to pull out)

All hail Paul Gannon.

Which ever way we look at it we simply are,nt good to beat the aussies, we dont have an x factor. Lets be realistic, we put in a big performance against against what was a subdued Kiwi performance and then the media frenzy kicked in. Players making big statements and then falling well short. The aussies play at a higher intensity every week and then step it up another level for origin games etc. We will never have that because rugby league is,nt our national game.

Do you not think leeds and other clubs should give these players some time off at different times of the season,which at the same time would give the club the opportunity to blood some of there up and coming players.

What we lack is an out and out leader who could give the Aussies a run on their own like sculthorpe or farrell.

I think sculthorpe is the last player the Aussies genuinely respected and feared

where was the biff when inglis slammed tomkins through the advertising boards.. had one of ours done it to them, without doubt it'd be a full scale brawl, and again a scully or farrell character would've been in there too.. we genuinely are feared of them