Simply not good enough from 1-17 and beaten by a better team that can up their performance late in a game and do just enough to win. Yes Tomkins had a few moments in the first half, and some great catches in the 2nd half. Blaming individual players is bitter, biased, and quite pathetic really.

Where is the criticism of Hall for that stupid pass in the first mins? JJB awful offload near his own line, Yeaman and Briscoe sometimes lack of concentration, some poor kicks from the half backs that often went straight into the hands of Boyd or Uate with acres of space, gifted ball to Reed that was squandered straight away.

There were so many errors (and many were Tomkins wasnt even involved) by many players last night. No one individually is to blame, as a team they are simply not good enough.

I was at the game, and agree in many ways with what dubairl said. It's probably the way he put it that was wrong.
6,7 and 9 are the game controllers, and sadly neither of our three did that last night. They didn't have particularly poor games and nobody can deny their effort. How many times have we tried a loose forward at stand off (Farrell, Sculthorpe, Sinfield). Our kicking game was abysmal.
Everytime Sam caught (or attempted to catch) the ball he had two Aussies contesting the ball or a line of Aussies waiting for for him to return it. When it was the other way round the Ausies had a free catch, under no pressure whatsoever.

Some of our decision making was terrible. Hall's pass in his own 20, Graham the same, JJB the same, all little things but plays that were unnecessary and invite pressure.
Ellis dropped the ball and then misses his next tackle (Aussie score)
Fourth try (I think) Carvell and another English forward get left on the floor at the ptb. The Aussies moved the ball to their right and immediately to where one of those should have been defending, they hadn't got up and left a huge hole in the defence.

100% for effort but we're not clever/crafty enough and that starts from 6, 7 and 9.

We can debate who was at fault or which individual did this or that till the cows come home but the sad fact is no one player cost us that game last night. Our problems against them are far more deep routed then the 17 players who took to the field not being good enough. Our league isn't good enough and it doesn't install the discipline and basics in our players like the NRL does in there's. In our league you have plenty of weeks where you can get away with a lazy kick chase or being slack at marker but you can't do that in the NRL and certainly not in Origin. They are conditioned to do all the little things at 100mph at all times whereas our lads aren't. We didn't get beaten by pace, agility, power etc last night but by basic skills of hard tackling, accurate passing, a fantastic kick chase and general game awareness of when to stick and when to twist by the Australians. We looked poorly coached as well with no organisation in defence but especially in our attacking structure with our lads playing on pure effort alone. They were like a well oiled machine in comparison and it was uncanny watching their attacking structure after watching us at Wigan copy it for the past couple of years.


Overall and to sum up to improve we need to change. The RFL should have been ruthless a few months back when they found out Crusaders were pulling out and took that chance to cut the league back to a 12 team competition. We don't have enough good players or teams to service a 14 team comp and some clubs are really letting the game down at the minute. I'd personally be putting huge pressure on Wakey and HKR to come up with some answers as to why they're using their 3 year licences to fill their sides up with 12/13/14 foreign players and awful ones at that. Also things seem to have gone very quiet on the stadium development front for clubs like Wakey and Cas now they have licences. That happened last time and these clubs are basically cheating the system.

Anyway going away from the issue there but things must change. If they don't I'll be sat posting this sort of thing every year or so.

The only reason fans ever see a need to blame an individual for a team loss is because they have an agenda against that player. You never see fans blame their own players at international level, just those of your rivals. Despite the countless other mistakes by most of the players, a few like to single out Sam and completely forget about all the rest.

Sorry but Hall had every right to pass that ball as there was a 3 on 1 opportunity. We should be looking to attack from any position on the field and Hall had that in mind and IMO had Yeaman & Briscoe not been holding a mothers meeting we would probably found ourselves at the other end of the field.

The Aussies also have a group of players that play together for 3 very intense games in the Origin series. Im not sure of the make up but I bet the Roo's are predominantley Queenslanders ?

The pass was awful and Yeaman and Briscoe wernt even in position, so I dont see how he had every right to pass that. Yes Yeaman and Briscoe should have been in postion but they wernt and that doesnt mean you throw a stupid pass. Its nothing to do with who has the right, it was a poor pass to 2 guys who wernt even in position. So I would criticise all 3 of them.

I tend to agree with criticising all 3. However Yeaman & Briscoe should have been pushing up and then they would have been position.

A brain fart but he created an overlap and had every right to expect them to be in position.

People on this thread blaming one player are fools!! Whether Sam is a full back or Sinfield is a stand off or whether Hall should have passed or Roby was lacking aggression or whatever dosent matter, if England scored the first try in the 2nd half they could have had the Aussies panicking and may well have gone on to win the game but they didnt. The Australians are far better, its nobodys fault, get a life and enjoy it for what it was.... i did!

What is worthwhile mentioning is that England players werent getting in hard or bullying the way Australia were, too soft!

The Scoreline flattered Australia for sure but England (but for all the moany d fans like most on here) were superb throughout the tournament.

The pivots are all queenslanders.

We need to be patient with the Exiles concept but also make big and some will say harsh changes to the league set up.

You can't blame Tomkins and you also can't blame Sinfield. I was hearing people saying after the game that the forwards matched the Aussies and the backs were the problem. What game were they watching? The Aussie pack was miles better than ours in every way. The were stronger, quicker, more skilful, they played the ball quicker, they dominated our forwards in the tackle almost every time.
Their pack ran ours ragged and there's little that the halves or the outside backs could have done to influence the game.

I think not. I think the scoreline flattered England. Had it not been for Agent Smith on the video replay Australia would have been out of sight by halftime.

England were crap last night. They have gone backwards. I don't really care how well they did against NZ. We have beaten NZ many times over here and tbf NZ didn't look like they wanted to be here at any time during the comp. They also left half their team at home.

Our test is always against the Aussies in a final. We were better in 2009. We have gone backwards since then under McNamara. No surprise there IMO. Bradford did too.

Correct!

Spot on this. I don't think even Brough or Briers (IMO the best field kickers in the game) would have kicked well under that sort of pressure.
Similarly, most fullbacks would have been at least a little nervy if given so little protection from their team-mates.
Nor do I think Thurston and Lockyer (great players though they are) would have looked so impressive if the England forwards had dominated in the way the Aussies did.

The "who's to blame" mentality is typical of the small-minded parochial and blinkered attitude of many RL fans, and just gets in the way of any sensible analysis of the game.