Oh ek come back william eve all is forgiven

They'll reach the semi finals.

That's the way the draw has been tilted in their favour.

Will most likely play one of PNG, France and Samoa in the QF and those last two teams are very ordinary.

At least they avoid Tonga who could cause England a problem or two... and Italy of course

Can we please come up with something a bit more original than McBanana? It's getting quite boring.

And whilst we're on the subject of the coach...

I'm no particular fan of McNamara but let's be honest, the England / GB job is where coaches go to die. It's a thankless task in which the only measure of success is whether we manage to beat a nation that is lightyears ahead of us both on and off the pitch.

Call for the coaches head by all means, but I can't imagine a massive postbag of CVs turning up at Red Hall to replace him.

Crapnamara?

The idea of a warm up is you kick the living s*** out of some poor small team, When I warm up in the gym I don't expect to wake up in the hospital. Failure in a warm up is a new low and goes beyond player selection

However....

Just watching Les Mis' with the missus and it occurred to me how embarrassing this must be for the French. They have been trying to beat us for years and never got close.

Very true!

Lol it was a training run out played at 50% intensity as training run outs should be. Stop being so hysterical!

Having lived and worked over in Italy to try and help with the development of rugby league last year, I'm thrilled at the result. Shame it's at England's expense.

I just hope following this World Cup that rugby league carries on growing in Italy. I spoke to Fabrizio Ciaurro after the game, having played alongside and against him over in Italy, and he's the only out-and-out Italian in the squad. It'd be nice to see a lot more born-and-bred players coming through.

Why wasn't England team presence in SA used to help the sport there? No trial games against the SA national RL team? Fickle.

So you couldn't see the sarcasm oozing in my comment

If someone makes a solid statement, I'd expect them to have something to back it up.

It's completely unfair to criticise someone when you're using facts you can't back up. You were criticising he aebgland set up going to SA because you said it would be better to train in the rain. I'd expect something to back that up otherwise it's just an unreasonable comment that shows you just can't be happy.


Why don't we? You don't travel to high altitudes just to perform at high altitudes.

I wan't 100% sure!

I am annoyed about this because it just leads to hyperbole and ruins all the good work done in the build up to the opener, giving the likes of Eve and League Geek plenty of ammunition.

I was there and lets be honest the game was played like the warm up game it was. Players were on and off, swapping positions etc. They weren't going hard into the tackles, I only recall one 'big hit' which came from James Graham. Next week will be a completely different story. Still there is a hell of a lot of work to be done and certain players need to look at themselves.

Nothing to do with the coach for me, a group of players like that should be able to get the job done without a coach. Tim Sheens is a poor coach, but he has a strong and capable group of players. It is all about attitude and belief. Both were sadly lacking yesterday.