Not according to James Rule!!

Its up to the players - not the coach!!

spot on again mate

That England team was the best of our league. The Aussies have so much quality throughout their league. Apart from the top 4 and the odd surprise result. We pretty much know who is going to win a superleague match before it kicks off. Here is a a back up team off the top of my head that would also beat England and I bet you could do it twice again..

What do you think Shedon?

1. Gardner
2. Boyd
3. Cooper
4. Gasnier
5. Quinn
6. Soward
7. Sandow

8. Hannant
9. Farrah
10. Weyman
11. Creagh
12. Idris
13. Parker

14. Scott
15. Taylor
16. Saffy
17. Ballin

I hope Sheldon thinks why have you got a Kiwi in there?

Are you a nurse in Jersey

Still less than rovers

Didn't expect to win but wasn't happy with some of the decisions. At this level we shouldn't have to be talking about the ref and his handling of the game. I agree with the previous posters who say we should have a neutral one, after all this is the international stage. There were times when it was like superleague and the ref only watching one side. Their points mostly came from our mistakes or the ref's dubious decisions. Don't blame Briscoe alone he couldn't do much when he only got the ball once in attack. I think N.Zealand have got it nailed, c'mon Kearney's boys.

1. Brett Stewart
2. David Williams
3. Justin Hodges
4. Mark Gasnier
5. Darious Boyd
6. Todd Carney
7. Mitchell Pearce
8. Matthew Scott
9. Michael Ennis
10. Jason King
11. Nathan Hindmarsh
12. Neville Costigan (think he's calling himself an Aussie these days)
13. Greg Bird

These would be my reserve Aussie reserve 13 based on players that are not involved in this 4 nations. I haven't included Inglis and Thurstan as they would of been involved but for injury. I think it demonstrates how far behind we are.

Stating the obvious but sadly we are now very much second division at international level.

NZ have just 1 professional team but a full squad - except Thomas L - who play in the NRL.

None of the many Aussies currently playing in SL - even Mark O'Meley and Michael Dobson - would get anywhere near the Green and Gold squad.

We can't even sustain a 14 club team SL competition without porous 'quotas' and 'exemptions' for Harlequins Catalalan and Celtic Crusaders.

In truth I don't think we supporters really care about England/GB so long as our particular club remains competitive in SL.

Looking forward to next season, of course I am.

Which adds fuel to my genuine belief that the international game would benefit from the return of the tours surrounding a 3-game series. I think we'd get better crowds with more fan interest, something driving the clubs to improve their players still further, and the opportunity for them to with non-international players gaining experience playing against the best players in the world. It would certainly be better than these repeated attempts at 4-nations tournaments trying to pretend there are more than 2 decent sides in the world.

Lets face it, we could name an oz 13 who play over here that would probably beat us

The biggest factor was the amount of mistakes we made, you can't give the aussies that amount of possession and expect to stop them scoring tries. They move the ball better than us and have a higher skill factor. The biggest difference for me is the backs, they could name three different versions of 1-7 that would be better than ours plus they play at a higher level week in/out than we do and also play SOO which means that can handles big games and pressure.

The difference generally is in the heads of the players and coaches. The Aussies make our guys look and sound thick. Yes the players are well coached but they're infinitely more capable of understanding and carrying out the coaches instruction. The coaches as evidenced by our "young english" group over here are also light years ahead of our guys in terms of the ability to communicate their message and to manage/inspire their players. We can be as fast , as fit and probably as skillfull but we have signally failed to match the Aussies in intelligence at all levels in the game.

We can match the Aussies in the forwards, but our halves are abysmal and the threequarters, as evident this morning, are criminally poor.