Human Punk

Exactly the same horrible mish-mash. I think we're all agreed that the squad and team selections have been comewhat lacking - all that says is that he's not fit to be coach of GB or England. I'd still rather have seen an awful team with some Welsh or Scottish players in it than the one we got.

Yes we would. The worst thing about this tour was, apart from a bit of the Tonga game, it was just a dross version of England we were supposed to be interested in watching. It wasn't GB at all, and whatever you say about Lachlan Coote, at least he played for Scotland, and when he got emptied early doors I pretty much couldn't be bothered with it. I won't accept that the likes of Gil Dudson, Matty Russell, Regan Grace or any number of representatives of the Scotland, Wales or Ireland teams wouldn't have been good enough to put in a decent show against a PNG side full of championship players. I'd be happy to see GB back, but properly as GB, not a guffing England 'B' team.

Here's hoping.

Funny enough, I decided to cheer myself up by watching an old DVD of a tri-nations GB/Aus match when Nobby was coach, and Bennett was in charge of the Kangaroos. The Aussies were offloading the ball all over the place, and spreading the ball about at every opportunity. It was very entertaining. And we won. I'm not sure what any of that means though, other than Bennett doesn't coach us the way he used to do Australia, and he's still a loser.

Absolutely. Bennett is killing the game as a spectacle. Look at the RU world cup final, 32-16 or whatever it was, compared to our 6-0 'thriller'. It's all very well to say we were close to winning it, but I know which final any neutral would have preferred watching, and that's an embarrassment for our sport. RL used to be the entertaining sport, and it still can be (Aus v Tonga for example), but I'd doubt anyone who said they'd got up early to watch any of these 'Lions' atrocities and managed to stay the course without nodding off. Bennett can go hang for a whole load of reasons, but that's the main one.

Not a world beater, but too good to be not playing regularly. I thought it would only be a matter of time before he found another club. Should be a decent signing for FC.

Am I the only person who thought David Fairleigh was the main man behind Saints successes that year?

I'd go with Ellery Hanley's monosyllabic interview on the BBC SPOTY, which went something along the lines of TV host: "What do you think this fantastic year in SuperLeague will do for the profile of rugby league in the UK" (or some similar general question) Ellery: 'I only care about Saints" TV host: "Right, well lets move onto the synchronized swimming"

That's a great point, and worth repeating. If we weren't trying to speed up the PTB so much then defenders wouldn't need to try to slow it down by the same amount. If things were done properly (as Dave T espouses) we might find that the PTB speed was just the fast as before, and we'd have less penalties too. I did have to laugh though during the Cats game when Tomkins executed a decent tackle, wasn't in the ruck, then Myler(?) stepped over him and played the ball back into him, winning a penalty. It's probably true that 2 wrongs don't make a right, but it was a close call that time.

I'm not buying the 'poor troubled Zak' guff. The guy's plainly a tool of the highest order. Drink driving has come to be recognised for what it is - extremely irresponsible and dangerous, and the cause of many deaths and life-changing injuries. I have zero sympathy for anyone caught doing it. And that's before we take into account the aggravationg factor of a lack of MOT, or any of his previous affronts. Should WIgan sack him? Its up to them. Would I want him sacked if he was at my club? Yes. He's shown that he can manage to hold down a job elsewhere, doing whatever. Let him go do that again, same as loads of other, much nicer, people than him.

Can't we send him to Australia?

I agree that the presentation needs changed. The difference between Sky here and the Fox coverage in Aus is night and day. Good commentators like Vossy can make a game sound probably 25% better than it actually is, whereas the dross we are served by Sky makes it seem about 25% worse. The standard of play in Aus is generally better overall, but not always in every game. But watching on TV you'd always come away with the view that the Aus game was way more exciting. The same comparison could be made with Sky's football coverage. There's no way that someone of Eddie's standard would still be in a job covering the EFL.

I voted Wire before reading about the list of missing players, so now I'm going for Wigan. Agree it will be good to see Manfredi back. Looking forward even more to seeing WIgan v Cas in the semifinal.

I didn't think the ref was too bad. He didn't get everything right, obviously, and Saints benefitted more than the Catalans from those, but to suggest there was an agenda ignores the fact that Saints had 3 tries disallowed. I've seen many far worse examples of refereeing decisions affecting the outcome of a game than that one. The Cats let themselves down, and both players and fans were looking for someone else to blame.

For me that game was won by Thaler. I don't see that either of the sin bins were merited, and 2 of Wigan's tries came from penalties that weren't (on Greenwood and Clubb). On the topic of sin bin offences, I was a bit perturbed by the 1st penalty Wigan recieved for lifting above the horizontal, on Navarette. If you watch the footage, the leg that goes up in the air isn't being held by anyone. Are players starting to play for these penalties, in the same way that there have been suggestions that there seems to have been an awful lot of neck rubbing going on this year? If there's going to be a huge chance of a sin-bin it must be tempting. And talking of crusher tackles, there was no intent, or even carelessness involved in last night's incident. If player safety is the concern then perhaps penalising players who put themselves in danger by going backwards into a tackle is the answer.