Surly doing a Lancs vs Yorke series would be much better! Not offence to the other 2 nations, but the standard is nowhere near that of ours! Or even make the series into 4 teams with Lancs, Yorkshire, Wales/rest of England and then France!

Anyone?

to be fair, this is not the full Eng lineup. We have at least 2 halves missing (chase, widdop), and the opportunity next season for a few of the more talented juniors to push themselves into the frame eg gaskell, lomax, as well as the option of using Sam.
Add to that the other Aussie based players that are not here, and next years Eng side will be a lot stronger.

We also now have strength in depth in the 3/4s for the first time in 20 years.

IF we can solve the problems at 6 and 7, we WILL be a real threat

We beat NZ fairly comfortably last year, I don't think we are too far behind them. Add Sam burgess, graham, widdop, Westwood, Roby lockers etc to this squad. I agree 7 is definitely the problem position. Myler needs to improve massively. As do the other options. I'd probably be leaning towards a sinfield and widdop hb pairing for next year, though I still don't like sinfield at 6 in the big games, I'd much rather widdop at six alongside a genuine quality scrum half, but I don't think we have one!

I'd go with a Widdop/Chase half back pairing, for me Sinfield is no more than a utility player at international level.

I think Lockers would go before him at LF, Widdop before him at SO, Roby before him at Hooker. He's really unlucky but I think there are better players than him for specific positions. Although there's no doubt he's very handy to have in the squad to cover for any injuries.

Quote: Bergen Bulldog "Not really impressed so far with the England / France game. All it's really telling me is that we're more than likely going to end up with a New Zealand / Australia World Cup Final as we're way behind those two. If the best we can do for half back is Myler then we're in real trouble when we have to step up to the likes of the Kiwis and Aussies.'" I must have been watching a different game. www.warringtonguardian.co.uk/spo ... s/?ref=rss

Quote: Bergen Bulldog "Not really impressed so far with the England / France game. All it's really telling me is that we're more than likely going to end up with a New Zealand / Australia World Cup Final as we're way behind those two. If the best we can do for half back is Myler then we're in real trouble when we have to step up to the likes of the Kiwis and Aussies.'" I must have been watching a different game. www.warringtonguardian.co.uk/spo ... s/?ref=rss

Who would be in your current England squad for next years World Cup. For me currently it would be:

FB S.Tomkins, Z.Hardaker
WNG J.Charnley, R.Hall, T.Briscoe, L.Cudjoe
CTR R.Atkins, K.Watkins, J.Reed, D.Goulding
SO G.Widdop, S.Ratchford
SH R.Chase, R.Burrow
PRP S.Burgess, J.Graham, A.Morley, C.Hill
2R G.Hock, G.Ellis, B.Westwood, B.Harrison
LF S.O'Loughlin, K.Sinfield