This thread reminded me of seeing the Leeds Academy select play Penrith juniors in November 2007. The Aussie lads were huge ! This was the telling factor in end result of the game.

An interesting aside - looking at the 20 man Leeds squad shows the attrition rate amongst young players. Only one still on the books at Headingley, a lad that has done OK for himself - called Ryan Hall.

I went to this. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Thought wigan did well in the first half but the Aussies brought on a few players and just ground them down. That folau look alike was a great player. Injuries didn't help the wigan cause though but those lads should be proud of themselves especially in the brawl!

regards

King james

Admission prices for the games at Leigh

Adults £5, concessions £3

Bargain

Get yourselves there.

Just to put the Wigan performance into perspective the score after 20 minutes at Headingley is Leeds 0 Aussies 22.

Does the fact it finished 24-38 make your post any more irrelevant?

But for two or three very weak players, Leeds could probably have won that tonight. Some outstanding players in that Aussie team, but not all of them.

No, Wigan finished the game with no subs available, they just got overpowered in the last quarter (quite understandably)
It'll be interesting to see the make of of the Aussie team on Saturday compared to the Wigan and Leeds games.

Well informed commentators making intelligent comments about the game... who'd of thought it was possible?! Are you watching sky?

Of course add Bilko and Joe to the list of intelligent rugby commentary too.

Ooh Rogues you just couldn't wait until full time could you before bigging up Wigans performance as opposed to trying to belittle the Rhinos after 20 minutes could you

The game actually lasts 80 minutes

What was the result this after noon.

England Academy beaten 22-18 by Aussie Schoolboys in the 1st Test at Leigh.....

Went to the game this afternoon, England lacked composure when attacking and dropped a lot of ball. Although had England not missed a few of the "easier" conversions they could have won the game.

The difference in size between the Aussie "schoolboys" and the England team was crazy, And not sure who the aussie 16 was but he was a piece of work!..

Enjoyed today's game, the Aussie lads were the better team, they will have benefitted from their run outs against Wigan and Leeds. The Aussies were that much sharper with the ball and dominated the tackle more. England stuck at it and have some improvement in them.

The difference in size was again obvious, I thought the Wigan pack looked bigger than the England one. Looking forward to next Friday's game

It was clear that the Aussies were going to be dominant down the middle. It was just so easy for them to eat up metres. England struggled to make any ground in the first half and were relying on penalties to get them up field. When they did have good field position it was squandered by poor execution. I think it was 3 times that a short pass to an oncoming forward at the line resulted in a spilled ball in good position and on the third occasion their fullback gathered the ball and went 80 metres to score.

England improved as the game went on. The forwards weren't really a match physically but they kept working hard throughout. I thought Luke Waterworth improved the speed of the ruck when he came on and made a positive impact. His ability to get the ball wide quickly proved to be quite useful as England had players out wide who could cause problems, particularly Gildart and King in the centres.

Jordan Abdul looked good. He was a handful and puts in some hard tackles. He's not your typical stand off, in fact he's very similar to Jamie Doran.

Nick Gregson went off early in the game with what looked like a bad knee injury. The knee was strapped up before the game so it's obviously been giving him some trouble. Hopefully the injury isn't as bad as it seemed at the time.

England finished the game very well. I thought Australia took their foot off the gas a little bit and that allowed England to get back into it but you have to credit England for never thinking the game was out of sight. With a better goalkicker the game would have been very interesting.