Why didn't Sam Tomkins play?

Apart from 10-15 minutes against 16 men where we showed a bit of go forward and desire, we looked flat and poor across the board

Kiwis weren't awesome by any stretch. However, I can't think of a single aspect of the game where they didn't perform slightly better than us. That added up to quite a big gap. They also had Marshall; had he played for us we might have nicked it.

Same old Stevie Macca producing another lesson in how not to coach a team.

Sam, are biggest threat from the backs is totally wasted as a 1st receiver. Took Macca 55 mins (+80mins from the last game to realise this). Sam moves to fb (as Eng like Wigan play split halves) and Sam looks deadly attacking further out wide, no wonder we get ourselves back into the game.

But due to no foresight from Macca he's then to put Widdup in the centres, a position he's never played before against an international test centre. What a bag of baby poo.

Reeks of how he had Platt, Halley and Sykes all playing in different positions during the game to course an almighty mess.

Did Widdop not go to centre due to an inury to Atkins?

I dont know if we are spoiled at wigan but the dummy runners were key to confusing the defenses this year i dont think England did it at all

The other thing we learned was why widdop is not even an nrl player yet, but eben he made more impact than atkins did when he went to centre

Too many mistakes though in the 1st half, 2nd was better though, if only brown had not pushed him (no need to he had already gone past the ball anyway)

Once again the teams from down under are just a different class. It's so ing depressing.

Oh and no thank you to Widdop. He's awful.

Maybe it's just me but I certainly didn't feel NZ were light years ahead of us. As per usual it was the basics of the game where we let ourselves down, that coupled with two defensively inept centre's. Team selection could have been better but with so many out I'll cut McNamarra some slack.

My major gripe would be with the style of rugby we play, were far better playing off the cuff stuff as opposed to just putting our heads down and taking them on down the middle.

That's the problem with having only one playmaker - too easy to shut down.

Terrible first half never got into the game

fielden giving away silly penalties and knocking on if first half (crabtree in for him next week)

goulding no where to be seen for first try

atkins was poor and widdop not good enough

credit for the second half fight back though

Goulding made the previous tackle on Pritchard and was at marker

First of all well done to Goulding i thought he had a brilliant debut and if that Shenton could defend and knew how to pass to his winger he would be a world class player because he has everything else.

I dont think Widdop was poor as everyones making out he dropped one ball from what i can remember, everyones been saying he is all set for the halves for Melbourne next year so why not just swap him and Sam Tomkins around?

1. Sam
2. Gouling
3. Shenton
4. Atkins/Cudjoe
5. Briscoe
6. Brown
7. Widdop
8. Fielden
9. Roby
10. Graham
11. Ellis
12. Burgess
13. O'Loughlin

14. Robinson
15. Westwood
16. Joel
17. Crabtree

So basically your saying he's quick....

still had a poor game and was singled out by nz... weak link.

but not the only one, widdop was not upto it either

westwood,graham, ellis, robinson, s tompkins, shenton all showed up well

Did he balls have a poor game he brought the ball out well from dummy half and if shenton had realised that he had a winger to pass to he might have done more

You were watching a different game to the rest of us! Although really it's because you thought Cudjoe should have been picked instead. Goulding had a good game, as did Briscoe on the other wing. Very good work rate from both of them.