Starting for England Yawnion against the ozzies this weekend.Its not a good feeling when homegrown players leave but I'm a always glad when they do well,so well done Joel and I hope he does well.

Is that now 3 Wiganers in the squad plus a coach?

And the fitness coach, Paul Stridgeon

A very talented player, he's just what we need off the bench for England at the moment IMO

3 wiganers in the England RU side. Don't know whether that's a good or bad thing.

To have 3 young lads leaving to Union for me is a bad thing,but it shows how strong Wigan/rugby league is when within 2 years they are in the England side.

I'd be surprised if he gets more then 3 or 4 touches.

Hope it's not too cold for him.

Agreed and yet I just heard his snivelling interview on Radio 2 in which he says it's going to be a 'big step up from international rugby league'

They all play a significant part in the booming England set up, a lot of stuart lancaster coaching has a big rugby league background to it as well. will be interesting to see if Joel can establish him self as first team regular for England as they do have a lot of good up coming .

The RFU for a centrally funded contract, they would of loved to take rugby league poster boy again.

Not sure of the exact figures but isn't the average actual ball in play time for RU something like 30-35 minutes, compared to something like 55 minutes for RL. Not sure how standing round for an extra 20 minutes leads to extra intensity?

All the focus seems to have been on Joel in the last couple of days, yesterday on Radio 1 sport news there was an interview with both Tomkins' and the questioning to Joel was mostly if Sam would be jealous of him playing at Twickenham.