In the first half they only had marginally more possession than we did (I haven't seen the stats for the second half). We just did begger all with the possession we had, and gave it away cheaply sometimes too.

Sir Kevin Sinfield was more to blame than same,very poor play as usual from Super Sinfield, if the guy couldn't kick then he wouldn't even be in SL, very very shody

Thought this header might have popped up on the Warrington board

Really cannot believe how myopic some people are. quite simply, Sam Tomkins is the most exciting product to come out since Sean Edwards. The Lad is simply class, but, when you play a player out of position, you will be caught out. You may get away with it in SL, but against the Aussies, you will not. We've done it in the past with Farrell and Sculthorpe, and now Sinfield...ffs, they are forwards!!

Tomkins, is the only player the Aussies fear, hence, his treatment tonight, everytime he got the ball, he was nailed. Put him at halfback and give the oppo something to think about.

Do this and Wigan will tie up the title by August. He is wasted at fullback.

Spot on.

It was a 60 - 40 split in Australia's favor at the 30 minute mark.

Well the halftime stat was something like 51-47 in Australia's favour.

HICK ,YOU

Its what you do with possession that matters. You can have the ball in the world but if you dont do anything with it then it counts for nothing.

And that was our problem. We did precisely nothing with it, except for the one Ryan Hall try. That's largely down to halfbacks. As usual!

Those people criticising Tomkins for not catching some of those kicks need to look a little deeper into what the Aussies were doing. There's a reason they were going for the high and short kicks, it's because the fullback is forced to take a standing jump while the Aussies chasers are able to take a running jump.
In that situation, if an Aussie player is competing one on one it's poor play from that attacking player if he doesn't win the ball. What Tomkins had to do is make sure England came up with the ball no matter what and that's what he was doing.

Had England put those kicks up to Boyd he'd have had exactly the same problems. That was shown at Wembley when Reed easily plucked the ball out of the air when challenging him. The problem was England were never in a position to put in those sort of kicks. Our kick chase was never quick enough and the Aussies were so quick to put pressure on the kicker that there was little time to act.

England's defence failed to put pressure on the kickers in the same way, meaning they had all the time in the world to hoof the ball high and have 3 or 4 players ready to challenge Tomkins when the ball was coming down.

hahaha what a embarrassing thread the full england team didnt perform on the day . All 1 man rugby down the middle .end of

What a load of We lost because as usual, once the Australians decided to really crank it up a gear, we couldn't keep up with them, They outplayed us in every single department and to blame that loss on just one player is ridiculous.

I'll admit Tomkin's, along with most of the England side, didn't have a great game. Tomkins struggled with a few bombs, Lets not forget the superb pressure he was put under by the aussie's whilst trying to catch those btw...On the reverse... every single bomb we kicked didn't have an England player anywhere near the aussie receivers applying that same sort of pressue. Considering those mistakes didn't actually cost us any points I don't see where you are coming from.

He had a quiet game but down to the fact that the rest of the backs where pretty woefull aswell, Chase needs to learn to pass the ball more instead of trying to magically get through the aussies on his own.

People keep saying 'oh yeah, get the ball to tomkins more' but tonight, he didnt want the ball. Not since Inglis put him in the stands. He only really committed to catching one bomb. And that was the one he caught. He only made one or two of the weaving runs he normally makes half a dozen of in a match. Im not blaming him for the loss, cos in general we were awful and the aussies have so many top class players in key positions. We didnt pressure the kicker, pressure that fullback when up for a bomb, and in the end the aussies ripped us to shreds.
The best team won.

On a related note, why wasn't Inglis sin binned for that? It was a cowardly attempt to injure Tomkins. Just like the Kiwi last week dropping a forearm onto Tomkins' jaw when he was already on the floor. Absolutely pathetic.