Did Mitchell Pearce and carney play in the halfs? Still to see what all the fuss is about Pearce. Carney is class though. Queensland, though a settled team they are starting to age a bit now,they will lose the series this year or next i reckon. Nsw with Dugan,t-Rex,tariq sims and tamou,a cracking bunch of young guns stepping up,the tides turning...hopefully

Just finished watching this. What a pity we didn't stick with Lancs v Yorks and try to emulate what the Aussies do. Eng v Exiles will never match it and ultimately is self defeating - if we want to improve English players and reduce reliance on overseas, then the Exiles team will get weaker and the game will be a dead duck. Plus of course they have few fans so there can never be the big crowds and atmosphere.

Lancs v Yorks makes us look small time though and enforces negative perceptions of our sport.

I still think a one game Tri Tournament

West England
East England
Exiles

was the best option, at least that way we have a bigger pool of players trying to get a full England shirt

WE v EX
EE v EX
WE v EE

I was thinking the exact same last night about a tri-series but disagree about the small-time worry. Plenty of things about RL already and always will make us look smalltime but we do them anyway. Plus eng v exiles won't get any more national media attention - maybe less. We should be proud of our roots. I know we struggled a bit last time to get people really passionate about their counties - but there is even less chance of people getting passionate about "West England".

I think Lancs v Exiles, Yorks v Exiles then Lancs v Yorks would be great and whilst needing 3 dates in the calendar would still only be asking each player to play 2 games at the most. Each game would mean something and there would be no embarrassment about any team losing any of the games. If the Exiles beat England in both of these upcoming games - that's going to look awful.

And i think they will. My prediction is for two close games won by Exiles due to their superior pack.