I would agree with this. I just got a bit miffed with the whole new era thing under Bennett. I thought that McNamara did a decent job and was unfairly treated. Allowing for the relative resources available to national coaches Bennett won't have had to change much. So to start talking about us needing to 'learn' how to win annoyed me. The same group of players won well enough last year.

I'm afraid that I'm in the camp that says we should have an English coach in charge. We have plenty of English coaches to choose from for what is a part time job. In the past recently retired players like Ellery have done it. I see no reason why the likes of Paul Sculthorpe or Kevin Sinfield perhaps alongside Brian Noble wouldn't do just as good a job. Personally I'd have stuck with McNamara. If we are successful under Bennett it will only be because we got an Aussie in (or so the argument will go).

Luke Gale is the selection that doesn't add up to me. He has achieved nothing in his career. He plays for a mid table club who bottle it any time they get near a big game. Maybe if Bennett had picked George Williams he might have had a 'winners' mentality out there.

His big failing from Saturday was his pre match interview with Tanya Arnold which was rude bodering on plain weird! A chance to bull the game up and he seemed like he didn't want to be there.

McNamara did well overall I thought but I did feel it was time for a change to see if a new coach could take us on to that next level of winning either the four nations or the World Cup. That is ultimately what Bennett will be judged on and we'll have to wait until the end of next years World Cup to really judge him.

I do believe Wane, McDermott or Powell could have done the job to a very good standard but what always worries me with that is the internal politics that come with it. You always get those people who will say they're picking their favourites from their clubs and rumours quickly surface of friction in the squad between different clubs players if things aren't going well.

Who knows, in three weeks time we may be sat here as Four Nations winners. We can but dream!

After watching that interview and others on Saturday i got the distinct impression that Bennett has taken the England job just to put two fingers up to the Australian Rugby League management and others. He gives the impression he doesn't give a toss about English Rugby League either in his words or his body language .

Regards , EW

See you all in Coventry

I tend to agree, EW. Was talking about it on an Aussie forum the other day, and when I made a similar comments about Bennett's attitude, body language, etc, the comment came back, ah, it's Wayne Bennett, he's always been like that with the media. I pointed out that that might not be so bad in Australia, where he's revered as the Greatest Coach Evah, etc, but in England it's a different story, and any casual viewer seeing an interview excerpt on the TV news is just going to think, who's that pig-ignorant Aussie?

Bennett has said that Williams will definitely play.