The weather had a huge influence on both the game and the gate. As regards the Wigan Site going into meltdown because of the injury all I can say is that Wigan fans are generally interested in nothing apart from their own club. Had it been a Leeds or Wire player some of them would have been celebrating.

Was it the best game of rugby league any of us have ever seen? No.

Was it the best contest that it was possible to create for England mid-season? Absolutely. England looked up for the game and the Exiles, while not fluent, certainly didn't take it lying down. The conditions prevented it from being a free-flowing classic, but it surely gives the England set-up a better insight into where we need to improve than battering somebody would have.

Of course, I'd still like to see us playing France and Wales but I have no problem with this fixture/concept.

I think it's funny that people are saying the Exiles are finished because of a declining quality of import, when the best England have done so far is beat them by 8 points. We'll cross that particular bridge when/if we give them a good hiding. Otherwise, let's see how it pans out rather than scrapping it based on speculation.

In terms of what the concept is for, surely it is for giving England a chance to get a run out as a team, and trying to build combinations. One of the reasons for Australia's ability to function so smoothly as a side is the continuity they have in their team: Thurston, Slater, Smith, Cronk etc know each other's games inside out. Of course, they have the luxury that those players are also extremely talented.

Rugby league fans will moan and moan until the game itself dies, and then they'll really have something to moan about. In a way I'm surprised at Sally because I like his posts on Warrington, but sometimes I do think that he - like many other RL people - live in a halcyon era where Hanley and co were hammering the Aussies and we didn't need big ideas to try to change our position within the game.

I do think we need big ideas but this England v Exiles is not a big idea and it won't make a scrap of difference to standards against Australia. It's just an extra congestion for the season and it doesn't tell us anything about the players that we don't already know. The idea that places in the England team are up for grabs baffles me because what happens if a player has a great game in the Exiles match and another player is in better form at the end of the season in the playoffs and Grand Final. What tells us more...should the guy who had the great game against the Exiles get precedence because of how he's performed in the pressure cooker of international rugby or should the guy who's been in better form in the playoffs get precedence...?

As a big idea I'd rather cut the number of teams in SL to 10 which would mean you would have a more intense competition every week. The Aussies have intensity every week because they have the players to support the number of teams they have in their league, but we don't. In fact at the moment we probably can only support 9 teams. If you cut Salford, Wakefield, Castleford, London Broncos and Widnes you would release a pool of players who are good enough eg Holdsworth, Smith, Fox, Mathers, Chase, Huby, Griffin etc who would get signed by the top 9 and displace players at the lower end. Also fewer teams would mean the salary cap could increase as there would be fewer teams by which to divide the TV money.

For too long we have used the argument that its a numbers game, we need more numbers to allow more spaces for players to come through, but this is not true, its not like there are loads of class players potentially international standard, who are stuck outside of SL having to play in the Championship because of shortage of places. There are a lot of absolute rank average English players playing in SL especially at the lower clubs, players that will never in a million years get near international standards. So if the issue is that talented youngsters are not getting a chance its down to the fact clubs are making poor decisions keeping the no hopers hanging around in the first team.

I know cutting the numbers breeds opposition and it caused a massive storm when it was done in Welsh RU not least because this involved mergers, but Welsh RU had been in the doldrums for ages before they did that, and since then they've won 3 Grand Slams in seven years which is up with their record in the 1970s. Now had they just kept the number of teams the same and instead played a mid season fixture, Wales v overseas players playing at Welsh clubs, would that have had the same impact....?

I highlighted this bit because I think it's important and doesn't address what I was getting at (possibly due to poor formulation on my part). I think if England are going to make short-term strides to give themselves a chance in 2013, a successful strategy will be based on the team rather than the individuals itself. I sense that's what McNamara is thinking too, hence the otherwise inexcusable selections of Chase and Sinfield as a halfback pairing or Carl Ablett in the centres. If we can gain some sort of team culture and cohesive structure going (and unfortunately Wigan are the best example of this in SL at the moment) we might have a better chance than if we just pick the seventeen most in-form individual players from October 2013 and hope they form a bond.

As for the rest of your post, I tend to agree that cutting the number of teams to ten would be a way of improving the intensity of games in the league. The trouble is that the cons of cutting 3/4 reasonably well-supported clubs and its opposition to our general hopes of spreading the game are more concrete than the theoretical result of improving the national team (about which most RL fans are, sadly, not bothered anyway). Of course, it would also increase the quality of play at Super League level, that is an argument for it.

Now a Wigan player has been injured it will be binned 100%.

But why play a one off game, months before the actual internationals? How does this create a team unit when the team may well be a fair bit different by the time the international season comes round anyway. I don't see it having any credible impact on 'cohesiveness' in these terms.

The fundamental problem is there is a huge gulf in class between England and Australia, so cohesiveness of the players is not going to change that. If we went back to the old style Ashes tours and sent England down under and played England v St George Illawarra, England v Brisbane, England v Melbourne and then went on to the first Test against an Aussie side that had just been thrown together, then the Aussies would still win. Most likely those NRL clubs would have all won as well, regardless of the game time we had had playing together.

Lancashire and Yorkshire would be a decent game with the players available nowadays.

Lancashire

1. Tomkins
2. Charnley
3. Bridge
4. Goulding
5. Riley
6. Briers
7. Lomax
8. Hill
9. Roby
10.Mossop
11.Hock
12.O'Loughlin
13.Sinfield

14.McIlorum
15.Adamson
16.Morley
17.Wood

Yorkshire

1. Eden
2. Cudjoe
3. Atkins
4. Yeoman
5. Briscoe
6. MaGuire
7. Brough
8. Peacock
9. Burrow
10.Carvell
11.Westwood
12.Tickle
13.Westerman

14.Crabtree
15.Pryce
16.Houghton
17.Wheeldon

To be fair, I think that would be quite competitive, long gone are the days we have to pick championship players

Except Michael McIlorum is a Leeds lad, last time I checked that was still in Yorkshire.

and danny tickle is as Wigan as a meat & potato pie

And Mossop is from Cumbria...

I think Lancashire v Yorkshire as an origin concept would be good if fans really cared about their counties, but they don't. NSW and QLD is a much more fierce rivalry than Lancs v Yorks. Also too many people over here think it is a negative image because it reassociates the game with northern areas and they want to convince people that no in reality its actually a national sport because a handful of amateurs play it in various southern regions!

I personally would get behind a Lancashire v Yorkshire concept but I'm realistic enough to know that most RL fans couldn't give a toss about it.

we should go for a north v south I'd be up for that......

cut the country in half along the east lancs road, and us southerners from st Helens, Widnes, Warrington, Salford, Sheffield, hemel hempstead, London and Perpignan could really get stuck into the northern filth.

that solves the problem of Wire and Saints fans having to stand shoulder to shoulder with Wiganers, and would then enable us to "despise" the northern Team despite it having fans from teams we actually dont mind, like Leeds and Bradford, and Cas and Hudds etc.....

its a winner that

I disagree with a lot of whats been said here. I think the concept is an excellent idea. Scrap the Mid-Season internationals and have a series of England Vs The Exiles - State of origin esque.

Lancashire Vs Yorkshire has been done to death in the past with very little success. The problem was letting it die out. To make it more like state of origin they needed to keep it going regardless.

The North Vs South game would not work at all. Where would the divide be? from what i can see it would be a combination of Lancashire & Yorkshire plus Cumbria Vs London and France. Too one sided for me.

Keep the Exiles series going and dont give up on it. Lets face it, its the best test England will get without playing NZ or the Aussies.