Quote: Barbed Wire "I think we will be competitive in the WC. In fact, for the first time in recent memory I am looking forward to an international series and have purchased multiple tickets aleady, 8 months in advance. I can't wait. We have a strong pack, decent (I know, not spectacular) centres and halves, and we have a full back and wingers of NRL standard. If Myler can continue his progress, and Sinfield carries his SL form into the series we will be ok. Widdop will be very near a jumper if playing regular, and is great competition for the other halves.'"
Depends what you mean by we will be OK. If you mean we will get to the semis or final, and beat anyone apart from NZ and Australia I agree with you we will be OK, we are 3rd in the world and there is nobody like France, PNG that is close to threatening our 3rd spot.
If you mean we will beat the Kangaroos then no. The pack is more or less similar level to theirs, but the gulf in the halves and the outside backs is huge. Even our best two players (Tomkins and Roby) would not be first choice in the Kangaroos because they would be behind Billy Slater and Cameron Smith.
This is the same situation it has been for years. I don't see any evidence that England has upgraded its quality to close the gap. If we did then I'd be more hopeful. Sinfield is a great leader and a very good player but so was Farrell and Scully. I agree with you about having players of NRL standard, Hall, Briscoe would get NRL clubs easily but they wouldn't be close to the Kangaroos squad. Same with Jack Reed that plays there. They would just be decent but not top NRL players, like Carney was or Gleeson or Senior would have been, we haven't improved on that kind of player and some of our other centres being mentioned are not up to it.
Then just look at the halfbacks, the gulf there is a million miles. The only British halfback thats at their level is Briers, he would have won caps for the Kangaroos but he won't play for England.
The best we can hope for is something similar to the 2011 Four Nations or 2004 Tri Nations. Get a good win over NZ in there, and then make the final. The final will show us up as we are well behind them. NZ I think are better than us but they have a flakiness to them that the Aussies don't have, sometimes they don't turn up well prepared for international tournaments, other times they are red hot.
The types of players we will be using will be similar to those we had in 2011 and there was a big gap between us and the Aussies in that final, the Aussies were missing players too. We have struggled against the Exiles sometimes too which shows about where we are - good enough to compete against a random assortment of good NRL standard players but not good enough to beat the cream of the NRL.
That's not a slight on the England players though its just they will get creamed by the best, just like its not a slight on Man United to admit they would get ripped up by Barca.
