Westwood is a player I hugely admire and respect - but none of the above is any excuse for persistently holding down in the tackle.

He gave away a couple of early penalties, when he wasn't tired, and I'm not happy about him play-acting when he got high-tackled. But when the fight started, he went in swinging, and so he gets a from me.

i thought westwood was pretty hard done by to be fair.

i thought jack reed was average, in that he made a couple of crappy defensive calls and failed to draw his man when he gave the ball to his winger.

sinfield and yeamen were hopeless.

great game though. really exciting international encounter.

That's a bit harsh - for the first try, they had very little room to work with and Reed's dummy gave Hall an extra fraction of a second to make a spectacular score.

On that note, I thought Hall was outstanding - the fact that he broke Billy Slater in the act of scoring is testament to his strength and power.

Agree about Sinfield and Yeaman - Sinfield couldn't even kick reliably, which is bizarre given his club record. As for Yeaman - Ryan Atkins must be wondering what the hell he's done wrong.

I'm not convinced Atkins is up to it anymore than Yeaman who I actually think is ok. Atkins always strikes me as liable to do something really stupid

Yeaman has had a cracking season for Hull, but he looks at sea on the international stage.

The one man who thoroughly deserves a crack at the international game isn't even in the squad. Kris welham has been the form centre of super league

Where are Carvell and Atkins?????

Can somebody please get Sinfield out of that number 6 shirt, he'll never be an international 6 as long as he's got a hole in his backside! There were two occasions when the ball was offloaded to him and he was stood with his back to the ball organising the next play. A 6 should be buzzing about the field and know everything that is going on, unfortunately Sinfield looks exactly what he is, a workmanlike loose forward out of his comfort zone at stand off.

If only he was not so poor in defence.

He has potential but until he sorts his defence out he should not get an International call up in my opinion as he would get crucified.

Atkins has asked not to be considered
Welham is a defensive liability
Reed looked good when carrying the ball but was pretty bad defensively
Yeaman uncharacteristicaly had a questionable defensive game.
Ben Westwood gave away three penalties but two of them were very pedantic from the ref, the very first tackle of the game, when he had Thaidays leg and the ref called held and when the two of them innevitably fell to the ground he penalised Westwood. Interestingly he didn't penalise Watmough a few minutes later when he tipped Tomkins upside down forcing Sam to do a somersault.

Agreed. Thought Westwood was a bit unlucky. Watching the game live, admittedley through slightly blurry vision, i thought apart from the penalties (which were not as cut and dry as people are saying) he was our best forward, yet you read the comments on here and the VT and think maybe i got it wrong and didnt realise quite how pi***d i was!
Yeaman is not upto it. Neither is Atkins and neither is Welham, The problem is im not sure who is! I think anyone of them could do ok next week, but the week after (if we win) is a different matter all together.

I don't agree that Westwood was badly done to; the ref made his intentions clear from the outset and at this level, it's not too much to expect players to adapt and react accordingly - Westwood failed to do that and persisted in messing about at the ruck.

If you look at them as isolated incidents maybe so and after he was done the first time, you could say BW should have learnt, but im not convinced the ref was consistent with his calls around the ruck. The one mentioned above when Whatmough tipped ST up was a prime example, and not the only one. Cameron Smith could have been penalised numerous times for various slowing down attempts.

for me it looked the the ref had had people in his ear telling him that england would hold the aussies down. i thought the two holding down incidents involving westwood were both harsh. you could argue that he didn't learn, but i don't think that this is the case, i think the ref had been conditioned to look for things that may have been there. there didn't appear to be a standard approach.