I have defended Bennett, quite recently in fact and still maintain he took England forward from McNamara. However this GB tour has been an absolute shambolic showing from start to finish. Team selections, tactical output, interviews with the media. All that lays at Bennett’s door and for me it’s been that bad that it warrants a parting of the ways for GB and England. I still maintain he’s a good coach but for whatever reason it just hasn’t worked here and it’s really tainted his reputation. His position is untenable and there’s no way around that.
The aspects out of his control is the marketing, advertisement, social media presence, fixtures, venues, crowds and I’m sure someone could add a few more to that list, and that responsibility lies with the IRFL. It’s looked more like a Community GB tour than an actual GB Lions tour which is an absolute disgrace. There was an open door to walk through, an easy win and once again RL has managed to walk into the bloody wall to the left of it.
We keep saying changes we could make to SL to make RL more popular but it counts for absolutely nothing if, internationally we don’t pull our fingers out our ears and stop whistling pretending all is well.
As for the next England coach there should only be one name on the candidate list and that for me is Shaun Wane.