Williams was actually very good against the all stars, and what was Wane going to do when Johnny cried off?

For what its worth, the Mickey Mac is unfathomable.
I get that he’s good defensively but Ackers is in great form and really shone vs Fiji and has been outstanding for the second half of the season. Leeming, McShane and Daryl Clarke all offer more than Mickey.

Obviously Hodgson would have been the shoe in before his injury and had Roby stuck his hand up, he’d be hard not to pick.

I really don't get the Tomkins selection either, Welsby all day long at fullback for me, to be blunt he's like Tomkins used to be.

Is this the same Croft that nobody mentioned at all until a few weeks ago? I don’t recall you waxing lyrical about him in April.

Danny brough has been turning out for amateur side Emley. They’ve been easily beaten a few times- does that make brough a poor player? He’s better than any other player on the pitch by far but that doesn’t mean his team will win.
In case you hadn’t noticed it’s a team game- to suggest that Williams doesn’t deserve to be in the squad because the team he plays for is playing badly is crazy.

Thanks to fat Garry Schofield for the motivation

Thanks to WW69/LEBRON/JEAN etc for the motivation

Williams was MoM for me. Let’s give Waney credit, it was a coaching masterclass. WW69 is clueless, I bet his daughters are really proud of him though!

Williams fantastic in attack and defence, Welsby excellent bar the one error and Tomkins controlling everything from fb and 9, don't want to be critical after a performance like that but McIllorum looked like the weak link, be very lucky to keep the shirt, also the old stagers Hill and Cooper fully justified their selections with their stints

Be interesting to read Schofield's take on this afternoon's result.
Not too bad considering England had poor ream selection and average players.

Brilliant performance from England. I’m really pleased for Wane too. You always know you’ll get 100% commitment from a Wane team but they were outstanding today in all areas.

Williams was MOTM for me, he really was superb. Shows how bad the culture is at Warrington to see him perform so badly at club level. Farnworth and Young were brilliant too and obviously Welsby with a try and 3 assists showed up well. I hope his mistake with the interception doesn’t stop him trying things as he plays eyes up all the time and takes chances. Don’t want him to lose that part of his game.

Maybe our team will gain some respect now outside of our own country

Very strong all round. The strengths of Welsby/Williams outweighed the weakened long kicking game as it turned out. Watkins and Radley were fantastic. Would be nice to see Ackers come in and take advantage of those dominant forward carries but Wane is clearly building a team based on solid defence throughout.

Will be interesting to see how Samoa respond - Matt Parish gives the impression of a demotivated sponger to me and the players didn't seem to want to play for him today. Maybe they struggled with the short turnaround but that was an embarrassing day for them and a great day for SL and England.

Even without a decent coach or game plan, I expected Samoa to make more of a fist of it than that. They've got enough so-called stars from the NRL, but they were mostly outplayed individually as well.

The whole thing reeked to me of players who'd totally bought into the myth that the NRL is so superior to SL that all they'd have to do is turn up. Everything about them was very, very casual.

That's taking nothing away from the England team, who played like a real team and Waney, who more than answered his critics today.

My thoughts exactly.

Players in the southern hemisphere, they seem to think their league is the pinnacle (as do we in the northern hemisphere as well) but that may not be the case....

I was always confident but not 54 points confident.

Thought the entire team were fantastic.

The first score in the second half was massive, it basically broke the Samoan spirit.

They are a very physical team but far from refined in the finer skills and clearly not well coached.

Williams shows how good he is when pulling in the England shirt. It’s bizarre how he is levels above his club form.

A few lads I think will be in there swan song for England and there is a period of transition coming but that looks to have fired them up.

Shaun Wane deserves a lot of credit. Tactically excellent and very motivated. Clearly picked out the weakness in defending the short kicking game.

Shouldn’t have to get out of third gear now till the quarter finals.

Great start to the tournament from an English perspective.

Thought that England were in a transitional period coming into this WC with Graham, S Burgess, O'Loughlin, Roby, Mcgilvary and more missing from the 2017 final. On the back of that performance it looks like we're well placed to handle that transition. Some good replacements in Welsby, Radley, Young, Knowles etc Probably the last run for Tomkins, Hill, Cooper and Hall but some other good replacements in the pipeline as well.

Pretty much agree with that. Poor stuff from Samoa, who would have expected that their much-vaunted back-line would be outplayed by Young, Farnworth, and co? Herbie's had no game-time after a bad injury, but I have high hopes for him in an England shirt.