MARTYN SADLER reflects on Tonga’s 30-12 victory over England in Perth.
ENGLAND coach Brian McDermott, earlier last week, suggested that his team was going to play with a different style compared to the performances that Shaun Wane’s England team had served up in the Ashes series a year ago.
The selection of Junior Nsemba and Kai Pearce-Paul in the back row alongside Victor Radley suggested that England were going to play a strong offloading game. And that came to pass. England made 26 offloads compared to only five by the Tongans.
And that wasn’t the only statistic that suggested that England had dominated the game.
England made more metres (1,513 to 1,462), more average set distance (36.91 to 34.01 metres), more line breaks (six to four), more kick-return metres (113 to 95), passes (247 to 192) and England made fewer ineffective tackles (10 to 39).
But matches aren’t won by statistics alone.
They are won by creating and taking opportunities, while ensuring that the opposition’s attack is nullified.
Unfortunately for England, that is where the Tongans, led by their outstanding halfback Isaiya Katoa, who has been justifiably described as the next Nathan Cleary, were much better than us.
And in saying that, it’s interesting to compare the role of the two fullbacks.
For Tonga, Lehi Hopoate was outstanding, totally safe under England’s kicking game and organising the Tongan defence to continually stifle the English attack when it came anywhere near the Tongan line, principally as the ball headed in Dom Young’s direction.
AJ Brimson is a fine attacking fullback, as we saw when he scored England’s opening try, but when his line is under pressure he seems to find it difficult to work out where the next attack is heading. Katoa soon latched on to that and both he and Tui Lolohea tormented the English defence to create Tongan tries when Brimson was late on the scene.
Young was one of the standout performers for England, making a deep run into the heart of the Tongan defence and laying the platform for the move that led to England’s opening try by Brimson.
And he did well to score the second himself from an assist by Hugo Savala.
But I think that coach McDermott made three errors that ultimately led to this defeat.
First, before the tournament took place he should have selected Jake Connor, who I imagine accompanied his Siddal team to West Hull on Saturday for an NCRL play-off game rather than being in Perth.
Instead of selecting Connor, McDermott stuck with the halfback combination of George Williams and Harry Smith that failed to deliver success against Australia last year. I think we needed Connor’s flair on the pitch in Perth.
Second, I think McDermott should have selected Jack Welsby at fullback.
Welsby is an established fullback in a way that Brimson isn’t. Welsby’s positional sense would probably have seen him able to prevent some of the Tongan tries that came from kicks close to the line.
Thirdly, I think that McDermott should have brought Jez Litten onto the field as soon as England scored in the second half to bring the score back to 10-6.
At that point I suspect that a fresh Litten operating from dummy-half could have found some holes in the Tongan defence and made them begin to doubt themselves.
But instead the Tongans replied with two tries to take the score to 22-6 before Litten got onto the field. By then it was a mountain to climb.
I also think the RFL did its bit to lose the game by making the members of the England team from Super League clubs complete a ludicrous journey from Manchester to Perth, travelling by coach from Manchester to London and then flying economy class from London to Singapore, Singapore to Sydney, and then finally Sydney to Perth.
That was a ridiculous journey, particularly to send players by economy class when they would have a limited time to recover from jet lag at the other end.
So now, if England are to qualify for the semi-finals, it seems to me that they will only do so if Samoa lose their next two games against Papua New Guinea and Tonga.
Unfortunately I think the odds against that happening are very long indeed.
