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Lions tour 2019 (Merged Threads)


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54 minutes ago, DavidM said:

You mentioned Watkins before . I mean it’s a crisis , is he injured or just that far off the radar .

I dont think Bennett sees it as a crisis. Hughes will do a grand job, he will defend well, dont worry about attack, Wayne doesnt.

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1 hour ago, Man of Kent said:

Blake Austin and Jake Trueman to make GB debuts, and George Williams to play, against PNG on Saturday week

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/wayne-bennett-lifts-lid-controversial-20819697

 

How’s that gonna work, there are only 2 halves positions? Or is Trueman going to play prop? 

Probably more likely be on the bench but you never know with Bennett. I hope he doesn’t get his contract renewed. He’s done a good job but this tour has exposed him, his inflexibility and lack of knowledge of SL players

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22 minutes ago, DoubleD said:

How’s that gonna work, there are only 2 halves positions? Or is Trueman going to play prop? 

Probably more likely be on the bench but you never know with Bennett. I hope he doesn’t get his contract renewed. He’s done a good job but this tour has exposed him, his inflexibility and lack of knowledge of SL players

I'm torn on Bennett. I think he has made us more competitive in some ways and the players seem to really like him.

On the other hand, I feel his playing style will only get you so far. The Aussies struggled to cope with Tonga's expansive game. That's what unlocks Fort Knox-like defences at this level. 

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4 hours ago, Man of Kent said:

Blake Austin and Jake Trueman to make GB debuts, and George Williams to play, against PNG on Saturday week

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/wayne-bennett-lifts-lid-controversial-20819697

 

well that pretty much sums this tour up... he is using GB to experiment and trial players for England next year and the world cup... this is an England tour then... lets stop flowering it up in the future then if the coach just sees it as England and building towards England for the world cup then what the hell is the point in GB except the shirt and the name (with the latter not really mattering anyway as we keep getting called England!).

If its a GB tour it should be the best of the best, no trialing for the other national sides ffs! its supposed to be the pinnacle isnt it.. its what people have said!

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6 minutes ago, RP London said:

well that pretty much sums this tour up... he is using GB to experiment and trial players for England next year and the world cup... this is an England tour then... lets stop flowering it up in the future then if the coach just sees it as England and building towards England for the world cup then what the hell is the point in GB except the shirt and the name (with the latter not really mattering anyway as we keep getting called England!).

If its a GB tour it should be the best of the best, no trialing for the other national sides ffs! its supposed to be the pinnacle isnt it.. its what people have said!

I disagree with that. If the tour was being used to build for the World Cup then a number of players shouldn't have been picked at all.

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2 minutes ago, Damien said:

I disagree with that. If the tour was being used to build for the World Cup then a number of players shouldn't have been picked at all.

Have you read the article Damien? he literally says

Quote

 

 “I did it deliberately because I wanted to see them all because it is such a vital position going forward. All the great teams have a permanent half-back, five-eighth (stand-off) combination and that is where you want to be.

“I didn’t want us going into the series against Australia next year trialling players. It is too close to the World Cup for that.

“I thought it was a risk worth taking here to find out what they all bring and I have not been disappointed in what we have done. It is not the ideal selection procedure but it is with a view to the next couple of years.”

 

I agree there are also some players that shouldnt have been picked if he was doing that... my point being that if the GB tour is the pinnacle etc then it should not be being used in anyway shape or form to trial players for one of the national sides... 

one of the reasons the RU lions is not a forgone conclusion as a tour is about whether the players from the nations can gel as a team.. they rarely if every "try a player out" for one of the national coaches, its the best of the best (or certainly how it is billed and for the most part is).

GBRLLions should either be the same or should be binned as if this is to test combinations for England it should be England.

 

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4 minutes ago, RP London said:

Have you read the article Damien? he literally says

I agree there are also some players that shouldnt have been picked if he was doing that... my point being that if the GB tour is the pinnacle etc then it should not be being used in anyway shape or form to trial players for one of the national sides... 

one of the reasons the RU lions is not a forgone conclusion as a tour is about whether the players from the nations can gel as a team.. they rarely if every "try a player out" for one of the national coaches, its the best of the best (or certainly how it is billed and for the most part is).

GBRLLions should either be the same or should be binned as if this is to test combinations for England it should be England.

 

Yes I did. You talked about the tour and that is what I replied to.

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2 minutes ago, Damien said:

Yes I did. You talked about the tour and that is what I replied to.

he states he is using it to trial players.. neither I nor he said that was all he was doing.. 

so I can only assume that you are thinking it is right to have the GB tour trialling players for the England World Cup team?

I'm not being difficult but just trying to clear up what you disagree with, you cant disagree with my point that that is what he is doing as he states exactly that, so the only bit you must disagree with is that that is ok?

 

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1 minute ago, RP London said:

he states he is using it to trial players.. neither I nor he said that was all he was doing.. 

so I can only assume that you are thinking it is right to have the GB tour trialling players for the England World Cup team?

I'm not being difficult but just trying to clear up what you disagree with, you cant disagree with my point that that is what he is doing as he states exactly that, so the only bit you must disagree with is that that is ok?

 

If he was building for the World Cup then like I originally said there are a number of players that shouldn't have been picked at all. Coote wouldn't have been picked and I certainly wouldn't have picked any player that would be too old in 2 years time.

I wouldn't have had the GB tour in the first place, precisely due to the mixed messages that you are talking about. England should be building towards the World Cup as a team and as a brand.

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1 hour ago, RP London said:

well that pretty much sums this tour up... he is using GB to experiment and trial players for England next year and the world cup... this is an England tour then... lets stop flowering it up in the future then if the coach just sees it as England and building towards England for the world cup then what the hell is the point in GB except the shirt and the name (with the latter not really mattering anyway as we keep getting called England!).

If its a GB tour it should be the best of the best, no trialing for the other national sides ffs! its supposed to be the pinnacle isnt it.. its what people have said!

Absolutely. Many suspected Bennett is treating this tour as trial games, but he flat out admits it.

The thing is he's learned virtually the square root of ###### all because of who he picked and, more to the point, didn't pick. 

 

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29 minutes ago, DavidM said:

If he’s coming out now and saying it’s about the WC I’d find that totally bizarre 

quoted in the Mirror article as saying just that.

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3 hours ago, Man of Kent said:

Brian Carney compares the tin-eared Wayne Bennett to Gerald Ratner and turns his guns on Ralph Rimmer for presiding over a “farce”.

https://www.skysports.com/rugby-league/news/12196/11857353/brian-carney-is-wayne-bennett-rugby-leagues-gerald-ratner

It's a poor analogy.

Ratner's business model was always to sell tat pretending to be jewellery. He made the mistake of saying it out loud.

Bennett was doing a good job selling a quality product to a growing customer base and then his idiot boss bought a load of tat off some old bloke in a pub and told him to suspend all the good work he was doing and shift the tat first.

As for Brian Carney, he should take responsibility for providing an Irish fig leaf to this "Great Britain" nonsense. He gave an interview to Irish media saying that when he played for them he had been lied to about promised changes to make the team more representative so why is he acting surprised that this has happened again?

I respect Wayne Bennett for treating it like the farce that is is and trying to salvage something from it by getting some England World Cup preparation in.

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3 hours ago, damp squib said:

It's a poor analogy.

Ratner's business model was always to sell tat pretending to be jewellery. He made the mistake of saying it out loud.

Bennett was doing a good job selling a quality product to a growing customer base and then his idiot boss bought a load of tat off some old bloke in a pub and told him to suspend all the good work he was doing and shift the tat first.

As for Brian Carney, he should take responsibility for providing an Irish fig leaf to this "Great Britain" nonsense. He gave an interview to Irish media saying that when he played for them he had been lied to about promised changes to make the team more representative so why is he acting surprised that this has happened again?

I respect Wayne Bennett for treating it like the farce that is is and trying to salvage something from it by getting some England World Cup preparation in.

Brian Carney is just embarrassing Irish league fans and players at this stage. I don't understand his obsession with calling the team "GB and Ireland", when clearly they have no intention of branding itself as that. We should be distancing ourselves from this, not desperately clinging onto this nonsense.

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10 minutes ago, Keith989 said:

Brian Carney is just embarrassing Irish league fans and players at this stage. I don't understand his obsession with calling the team "GB and Ireland", when clearly they have no intention of branding itself as that. We should be distancing ourselves from this, not desperately clinging onto this nonsense.

I completely agree. Did you see his previous column?

An entire article about how the tour would have been a success if they had fully embraced the different "Home Nations" (his words). The entire point of the article was basically "stop calling it GB" and he refers to "GB and Ireland" about a hundred times. His editor then publishes it with a Title and Sub-heading that both refer to the team as GB. TotalRL.com publish a commentary on his article in which they refer to the team exclusively as GB, ignore the point of the article and focus on a throwaway comment about Darryl Powell. They don't care and he's a fool for continuing to try.

To any Irish person reading his articles the subtext of what he is saying is blindingly obvious. But he's writing for a British audience who don't understand the problem and don't want to understand, and in order to get the point across he would have to get explicitly political which would probably get him the James McClean/poppy treatment and his P45. I would sympathise, but then I remember that he cheerleaded the return of "GB" having seen all of this happen before so he only has himself to blame.

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32 minutes ago, Keith989 said:

Brian Carney is just embarrassing Irish league fans and players at this stage. I don't understand his obsession with calling the team "GB and Ireland", when clearly they have no intention of branding itself as that. We should be distancing ourselves from this, not desperately clinging onto this nonsense.

It was GB and Ireland though. 

I've noticed that, since the brand was brought back, they've dropped the coat of arms on the right breast. That's probably due to the fact that the RLI wanted nothing to do with it from what I heard.

It's not clear what this brand being brought back was meant to stand for; what its intentions were; what its future was; who and where exactly it represents.

Employing Bennett as the coach killed the concept because he treated it as a friendly series for England. Some people have said the respect him for treating it like the farce it is. Screw that. He should never have taken the job if he didn't buy into the concept of it.

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12 minutes ago, damp squib said:

I completely agree. Did you see his previous column?

An entire article about how the tour would have been a success if they had fully embraced the different "Home Nations" (his words). The entire point of the article was basically "stop calling it GB" and he refers to "GB and Ireland" about a hundred times. His editor then publishes it with a Title and Sub-heading that both refer to the team as GB. TotalRL.com publish a commentary on his article in which they refer to the team exclusively as GB, ignore the point of the article and focus on a throwaway comment about Darryl Powell. They don't care and he's a fool for continuing to try.

To any Irish person reading his articles the subtext of what he is saying is blindingly obvious. But he's writing for a British audience who don't understand the problem and don't want to understand, and in order to get the point across he would have to get explicitly political which would probably get him the James McClean/poppy treatment and his P45. I would sympathise, but then I remember that he cheerleaded the return of "GB" having seen all of this happen before so he only has himself to blame.

Gosh that's depressing to see. He really is alone in this battle, as you'd be hard pressed to find anyone in Ireland that wants Irish players in a team called GB. The Lions in union are still to this day called the British lions by some quarters in the British media, so how he thinks there is a chance of getting the Ireland name tacked onto this is beyond me. Not that he should be even trying to in the first place.

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11 minutes ago, Wellsy4HullFC said:

It was GB and Ireland though. 

I've noticed that, since the brand was brought back, they've dropped the coat of arms on the right breast. That's probably due to the fact that the RLI wanted nothing to do with it from what I heard.

It's not clear what this brand being brought back was meant to stand for; what its intentions were; what its future was; who and where exactly it represents.

Employing Bennett as the coach killed the concept because he treated it as a friendly series for England. Some people have said the respect him for treating it like the farce it is. Screw that. He should never have taken the job if he didn't buy into the concept of it.

Was there actually a job for coaches to apply for, or was the role simply given to Bennett? In some ways I don't think you can blame Bennett for focusing purely on the job he's there to do, which is to coach England, if the role was simply handed to him. It provided him with an opportunity to coach most of his England players this year otherwise he wouldn't have had that opportunity.

It was completely ridiculous to bring back GB, claim it is some separate entity to England and then hand the coaching job to someone whose only interest is England. Bennett's been in the game long enough for everyone to know what he's like.

I wouldn't even have minded if they had included players from the Celtic nations who perhaps might not have made a full strength side - because if you're going to bring back Great Britain then it only makes sense if you're going to go all in with this British identity. If it's coached by the England coach and full of England players it's not worth it.

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32 minutes ago, Wellsy4HullFC said:

It was GB and Ireland though. 

I've noticed that, since the brand was brought back, they've dropped the coat of arms on the right breast. That's probably due to the fact that the RLI wanted nothing to do with it from what I heard.

When and where? Absolutely everything to do with the team is referred to as "Great Britain RL Lions". That's their official name.

It goes far beyond the name though. It's a red, white and blue jersey with a Union flag on it and they sing the British anthem for God's sake!

Anyway I'm falling into the same trap as Brian Carney. At this stage anyone who wants to or is capable of understanding the problem already does and anyone who can't or doesn't want to won't be persuaded.

The ridiculous thing is that I don't even want them to change anything. Anyone who wants the team back wants "Great Britain RL", the "iconic" red, white and blue jersey and the bloody anthem. I just want them to stop claiming it represents Ireland!

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