posted Oct 14, 2008

I think if we can make it through to the final, anything can happen in a one off game - the Kiwis showed that in 05.

If we can beat PNG and the Kiwis and run Oz close in Melbourne, it might just give us the confidence to win our semi and run them close.

I don't think there is any doubt that they are the better team, but this England team is a different beast to the one dimensional GB teams of recent years.

At least if we go down, we will go down playing a brand of rugby to be proud of.

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posted Oct 14, 2008

If we're going to beat the Aussies it will probably have to come from the forwards. Their backs are 10 times better than ours but in the forwards its more even. If Roby and Higham can gain some momentum for the team going forward at hooker then we could have a chance. If the play the ball is too slow we could get mauled.
Burrow could be great if the forwards do enough of the work. A few quick play the balls and good momentum and Burrow could run rings around some of their slower forwards.
As for players like Lockyer and Thurston, last time I watched GB vs Aus. Gareth Hock was lined up against Lockyer. He managed to stifle his creativity when he tried to attack and made some good yards when running at him. Something like that could work again.

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posted Oct 14, 2008

Is Lockyer injured? Our forwards need to put a solid platform and work the Aussies over in defence. The Aussies tend to make for too much ground on their sets and kick from within our half. We have trouble getting to halfway and they retrieve the ball on their 40 and build wave after wave of attack.

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posted Oct 14, 2008

Have you noticed, all threads are reading the same: we must do this or that to stop the Aussies playing etc.etc.etc., it appears our only hope is to stop them playing as we aren't good enough.
All they will be saying is we have to play our normal game. I personally believe we are still too far behind to win this cup.

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posted Oct 14, 2008

Aussie-NZ final. NZ start well but end up losing by 20 points.

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posted Oct 14, 2008

Our forwards will match theres all day..but our backs or not in the same league i'm afraid.

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posted Oct 15, 2008

The home team is always fired up, look what happened when they were over here. IMO and based on the performances iv seen in both the superleague and the NRL, things are not looking good for us.

If the aussies keep fit and get no injuries I can see a way we can win.

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posted Oct 15, 2008

NZ don't look so special on paper so i think we'll be in the final. And seen as i've got money on it I think we'll win it. But will be runners up in the group stage and will edge NZ in the semi.

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posted Oct 16, 2008

It's that old story isn't it- it's all about how you phrase the question!

Yes, we can. Course we can. But will we?

I personally reckon that the game now follows a whole series of sub-plots as the story unwinds. Both teams tend to get pretty much the same number of opportunities in terms of sets, times in the opponents third etc.

But the scores can be wildly different, alas.

It's true to say that it becomes a game about decision making; instant decision making.

I'm never going to say we can't and so I'll never say we won't but, my word those Aussie backs look good.

Some good decision makers there...

Come on England!

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posted Oct 18, 2008

We have the players and we have the coach its just whether they have enough time together in order to become a team insted of a group of players playing there own game. Smith has messed about with team so much in warm up games he needs to pick his probable team and use them together more so they can get used to each other game.

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