Who else could they have picked-Gleeson tried and failed(I suspect a bad apple also), Smith at Leeds, Yeaman
at Hull-Maybe the coaching team is looking to the future

listy look at the stats!!!!
gleeson v Clubb
yep missed tackles count is high but check out the rest
mtrs made 1860 v 2500
tackles made 295 v 515
missed 17 92
tackles bust 48 57
offloads 22 47
tries 9 5
assists 4 9

all in all yep he needs to improve his defence but this is in a squad that had second worse defence in the league compaired to a player that was in a squad with the best defence in the league
so he carried the ball more, made more mtrs, pased it more, was not as greedy and made 66% more tackles than the other bloke
Please dont think am knocking gleeson but makes Tony look pretty good when he is in a team that got spanked a lt last year

And we wonder why no-one want to come play for us when as fans this how we celebrate one of ours gettign an england call up

Thank you mickey!
You backed it all up with stats' as well, hopefully Dave will shut up for once.

A couple of relevant stats were missing from Micky's list, i.e. number of games played and minutes played.

I do think it's a bit sad when our own club's supporters are suggesting one of our own players doesn't deserve his international selection though. He's been involved with the England squad intermittently for the past couple of years and their coaching staff presumably feel his work with them shows the sort of promise and potential they're looking for, regardless of some mediocre displays in a struggling team.

Like Poplar Panther, I've felt for some time now that his ideal position could be prop. He's got to be almost as big as David Mills and looks more powerful than Mills both tackling and with ball in hand. In a team with a lightweight pack I feel he's a bit wasted at centre.

He's not a centre. He might come good in another position, but with him and O'Callaghan on one side we were sitting ducks last season.

Exactly. While Gleeson hasn't been in top form over recent years, this season has been his best for some time IMO, and his form is really peaking at the right time. He is international class, Tony Clubb is not. End of argument.

Clubb would never get an England call up if he played for any other club apart from ours.

What? Not even Bradford!

That must be a joke!!!!

sorry missed it

games played 22 v 27

The likes of Martin Gleeson, Ade Gardner and Paul Wellens have been proven beyond all doubt as being physically inferior to the Australian backline. In simple terms, they lack the pace and strength to compete at the highest level and their technical ability and positional play cannot disguise this fact. There is no point throwing them in again.

England have lacked a competitive centre for many years. Tony Clubb is deceptively fast - I have seen him go the length of the field in 2009 at Wigan - and a very powerful centre who will be hard to combat. It is true he attempts a large number of tackles but so would you if you were alongside a wing partner who was a rookie with limited tackling technique.

Put bluntly if your wing partner was conceding three to five tries a game, which O'Callaghan was at the start of the season, you would go in yourself. You might miss a few. But defending v 1 man is possible and v 2 isn't on your own.

Congratulations to Tony, he is an England International, rather than an Internet chatroom warrior. I am proud of him despite the sneers from his unequals on here - unless they are at the top of their profession? I doubt it.