Quote: alegend "We will find out next Saturday Australia R Lhave supplied the majority of the last 8 teams .The 2 best games of the World cup by far have been in the last 8 the New Zealand game and the Samoa game .Let's see what happens when England start getting hit hard for 80 mins and play against a Samoa team that as not just got of a plane'"
Was stood at the Tonga v Samoa game with a lad who was an analyst for the RFL’s high performance team under Wayne Bennett.
I mentioned the lower intensity than I expected and he put it down to the Islanders being more prevalent in the NRL systems and more measured in their approach to play not just relying on their physicality because inevitably they could not play to the high levels of intensity for the full 80.
What I find somewhat odd about your post is it seems like you are almost hoping the England team struggle on Saturday and are certainly not giving them credit for how good they have been so far in the tournament.
The NRL/Australian comps were always going to supply the majority of the knock out team players as quite simply there are 20 times the players playing the game professionally over there and even more than that playing the game as juniors.
Penrith Panthers alone have a junior linked system with more junior players in it than the whole of England has juniors playing the game.
I don’t think England will win by 60 again far from it, but I do think there will be 2 or 3 scores in it.