A poor england team, losing to a secondary nation in a semi final on home soil, in a half-empty stadium.

It comes off the back of a period in which super league is just really really really really poor and everyone is crap apart from a half decent saints, who think they're a seminal team.

I don't think this world cup has achieved anything, just feels like going through the motions. ''oh we're supposed to have a world cup aren't we? that's what international sports do, ok go on then let's put one on''.

Good luck to Samoa in the final, hopefully they can keep it below 50. NRL team plays NRL team in the final. Kel-surprise.

Stadium was two thirds full.

Factually, maybe. But it looks half empty on tv.

I think the attendances have been good and Samoa getting to the final is a great story. Plus exciting match today but from an England point of view it isn’t good enough. With that draw not making the final is a fail. Second best today.

We should be in the final and you talk about Samoa being a secondary nation but they’ll move above us in the rankings now, as will Australia.

Problem we will have now is convincing the southern hemisphere sides to come over for test matches.
It's possible that Australia,N.Z, Tonga,Samoa,Fiji & PNG will create series between themselves...and why not?. Less travel for them and painful to say better competition for the Aussies/NZ.
We meanwhile have a poor quality league that's getting weaker filling up with sub standard overseas players. Also a national coach who picks his old mates regardless of form.
Summer rugby might be great for spectators but has made the product worse on the pitch. High percentage of tries scored is against tiring defences.
For me, we should run a season split between autumn & spring, with potential tours late may. Then have pre season in the height of summer, which I think would improve the skill work required & fitness.
Rant over!

This was England's best chance for decades , the Aussie team definitely doesn't look as scary as any previous sides . Maybe Super League and the salary cap has been a dramatic failure and the quality of players has reduced globally . We have teams who are better at looking good on paper with tackles, metres gained , turnovers etc , we have just forgotten how to play rugby . I dont think many players for either England or Oz would make it into the 1994 sides.

Disagree. The Aussie team is definitely as good as ever in my view. The depth of players available in the NRL and the fact that players with islander heritage now make a larger proportion of them means we now have more tier 1 sides. The loss on Saturday was by the smallest of margins. No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The Aussies haven't been great. They were very lucky to beat New Zealand and they weren't in control of that game like they usually are. They will batter Samoa of course, their final was against England and they will have been enjoying that all week.

Not throwing the baby out , but the standard of rugby in my opinion seems to be dropping across the board , England dont have much competition for places , most of the side picks itself . I think its time to scrap the cap and let the sport grow. In my opinion there is no way on earth this Oz team would beat the 1994 team . They have always had multiple players who are impossible to deal with , I just dont see that in this side . GB also had players that were impossible to deal with like Offiah , Robinson but we are having to look back 20+ years .

Wasn't the cap meant to improve things?

It was and would have done if the sport and the clubs had the right management. Remember that the NRL has a salary cap as well.

The cap needs to stay unfortunately, but in a modified form. Something like your own youth players don't count on the cap at all (All French players for Catalans), five marquee players that you can pay as much as you like, of which three can be overseas players. Maximum of 28 senior players, with the remaining players capped at £2m.

That way clubs are incentivised to produce their own players (All clubs mandated to have academies), they can keep their own players once they've developed them, they can compete for stars from the NRL (which improves the product) and the big clubs wouldn't be able to stockpile players as you'd only be able to pay 5 domestic players not from your youth system at the highest rate. It'd bring an element of survival of the richest back into the sport, which isn't really a bad thing.

The salary cap was a good idea in 1996 but it's not kept up with inflation.

It now really impacts youth development as the prospect of leaving a job on more money to train full time for a young person isn't that attractive. Plus at the top end the standard of superleague is slipping and we can't attract Union players like we used to.

Get rid of it and offer England players a £1M bonus each for winning the next world cup. That's the carrot.

If they don't win the next world cup they have to play for free the year after and/or one of them is chosen at random and sacrificed.

We do lack some obvious once in a generation talents like Offiah and Davies. But they came from rugby union and that avenue of player talent has been removed for some time. Even without the cap you'd be competing with professional union teams - not the case in 1988 and 89 when those players switched codes.

If you scrap the cap you'd need to put some other measures in place to ensure that clubs are still made to ensure they have pathways in place for talent so that one club doesn't hoover it all up like what happened when Wigan dominated. The reason we struggle to compete isn't because we don't pay players enough it's because we don't have enough players participating and so we have a smaller pool to pick from.

Those two things must be linked however.

Would suggest the problem isn't so much the cap as it is a lack of money in the game as a whole. Would removing the cap suddenly attract wealthy individuals who want to spend more on players and development of the game to get more participation? I'd love to see some evidence for that. I've yet to read of all these millionaires that are turned off by the salary cap.