Yesterday's game was won in last weekend's press conferences, Tim Sheens bought that referee into refereeing how he wanted his team to play, & for the first half England battered them around the ruck. I feel the Aussies bench won them the game up against a bench of half fit players for England, Peacock toiled despite carrying a knock to his credit. Ginger Graham was yet again pi$$ poor at this level, get Carvell in for next week & the final. Which brings me round to the coach & his team selections. McNamara was a rubbish player & he's a rubbish coach as far as I'm concerned, the Rangi Chase love affair was exposed yesterday, it's a total joke. What is the point in folks coaching youngsters, nurturing them, getting them picked by SL clubs in this country for the greedy SL clubs to pick Johnny foreigner in front of them at both club & national level ? Hang your head in shame McNamara, you are a flop, you're gonna have to win this tournament for me to change my opinion.
The RFL are a bigger joke than ever, first they can't sell out the national stadium for the prestige challenge cup final & now they claim 42,000 attended yesterday, that'd be over half of the capacity, first i don't believe that figure & second they should be able to sell it out for an England fixture nevermind a double-header !
Well done to Gaz Widdop for smacking Watmough, some of our forwards should have had that desire in the first ten minutes and after the Tony Williams attack on Westwood which went unpunished, that should have been the licence for any player to take liberties without getting punished, we're too soft.
Don't expect NZ to play nicely next week either, unfortunately i see them knocking us around, get Bailey & Carvell in there and give it to 'em and rotate Sinfield with Roby at dummy half with Widdop at half back, we should approach next week as as if we're going to war cos it's international rugby league & once again we're proving we're miles off what it takes to be successful.
