Was great to see a young British halfback given a chance yesterday!

He wasnt given the field position in the opening 40 but had the Aussies on the back foot in the 2nd 40 with some fantastic line running and some excellent little kicks.

Great to see an aussie side fimly on the back foot and having to resort to cheap shots on exciting young talent.

At 20 years of age the confidence this kid will get from that 2nd half showing were he ran the legs off Thurston and an aging Lockyer is priceless.

Contray to popular belief i think we have some exciting world class young talent and in Tony Smith we have the world class coach to bring them along.

Would like to see Leon Price givven a chance in the centres think he could have an impact out there.

RESULT

Australia 26 England 16

End of.

You can be on the back foot all match if you win who cares were s.hit

Knob!

give the Aussies twelve months and they will come up with someone who will run rings round tomkins

Well thats as maybe but Tomkins was very good second half and it,s hardly his fault that the "ageing" Lockyer was picked by Australia.

You can't deny we were much better 2nd half ,yes we lost but there was alot to take away from the match.

Agreed mate.

This is the defeatist mindset we face.

Why automatically presume the Aussies will find a player to better Tomkins???

From what i see of the NRL there doesnt seem to be any young aussie born halves really ripping the comp up!!

Not only do we have Tomkins but Eastmond was putting doubts in the defensive line yesterday big time and can kick the football also and weve seen young Myler (who will only get better working with TS at Wire) step on to the international stage recently.

Im quite excited by the way we are giving yout6h the chance.

We could have gone down the tryed and failed route yesterday with likes of Wellens, Senior, Gleeson etc and still been beaten but the lads like Briscoe at fullback (still early 20s heart of a line good support player with pace and decent defence) will only get better and showed no fear.

we improved because in the second half the aussies let us improve. The aussie team in the second half didnt look like the same one from the first half. The aussies slowed their game down. Got to agree about Tomkins though, Great player!

Glad we agree about Tomkins but I have never believed if you are winning you don,t try your best. When I was a lad I wanted to score every time I took a pass and this impression the Aussies took their foot of the gas is misplaced imo.

When we learn to pass properly our game will move forward. We have talent as a side but we can do things better.

The Aussies would have wanted to paste us in the 2nd half too. I am sure they would have been the most gutted when we scored the 1st Try because it stopped them nilling us.

Australia probably have 3 who can run rings round tomkins now who cant play first grade they just have a long line of young talent there at the minute, we are garbage and there may be a defeatist way of looking at it.. i would say an honest way.

Should we save on travel expenses for the next one, and just let Aus and NZ battle it out

Exactly, leeigh thats how its gonna be for the next 20 years, our game simply isnt important enough for funding and reasearch that the aussies have

Seems to me if you are talented you are.Government funding, as no doubt we will discover, when this country hosts the Olympics helps, no doubt about it.

Biggest sport on the planet is assosciation football who has the best team in the world though and how much government funding did they have ?

All this Sky money and England can,t beat Ukraine at footie.

Never say never noone knows how good or bad our National RL side will be in 20 years time.

I think our team ie England isn,t far off. Just takes time.