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.

Yeaman looked out of his depth at the international level i thought. Atkins might not be a better answer to the problem as he seemed on the same level as Yeaman in last years internationals. Not to say either are not good SL players.

Good player solid good defence we can beat kiwi on satuday