It’s going to get ugly for England when they play Australia in the final round-robin game of the Four Nations tournament.
The Poms may have Wayne Bennett as coach, but even he can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
England have some good players, notably in the forwards where Sam, Tom and George Burgess, James Graham, Elliott Whitehead and Josh Hodgson are all playing in the NRL and Mike Cooper did too, until the end of last season.
But the quality falls away in the backs and the lack of class is most evident in the halves, where Bennett has already chopped and changed in a bid to find a combination that can make a difference.
The search has failed and it may as well be called off now because he has covered all of the available ground.
The halves Bennett sends out for the game at the Olympic Stadium in London in the early hours of Monday, our time, won’t be nearly good enough to make England truly competitive against the Aussies.
The Poms may well fire up for a while through the forwards, but they won’t go for 80 minutes. They haven’t done it in the past, so why should we expect it to happen now?
That was a pathetic opening spell by England against Scotland last weekend. The Scots scored the first two tries of the game to lead 8-0 and the Poms couldn’t post a try until the 27th minute.
England were in front before halftime and went on to win 38-12, but it was still an embarrassment for them to have trailed against Scotland like that.
What were they doing out there? Scotland are fodder. They’re not meant to be thinking they’re getting a look-in.
It doesn’t matter that the winning margin was 26 points, what matters is that the Poms weren’t switched on from the start.
If they’re not switched on from the start against the Aussies, it will be any old score.
As Bennett said at his very revealing media conference this week, if England play like they did against Scotland “we’d get beaten by 40 or 50 points”.
Most of those NRL-based English forwards look like high-class NRL players when they’re playing in that competition, but when they’re playing for England they go back to looking like Poms.
They just don’t have the same impact when they’re playing together, as opposed to being mixed into forward packs that are mostly made up of Australian players.
But their biggest problem is still the halves.
If New Zealand halfback Shaun Johnson had played for the Poms in the first week of the Four Nations, they would have won instead of losing 17-16.
The forward battle ebbed and flowed in that match. Sometimes the Poms were on top and sometimes the Kiwis.
The problem for England is that because of their lack of quality in the halves they need their forwards to be on top for the vast majority of the 80 minutes if they hope to win.
But they don’t seem capable of doing that.
Halfback Cooper Cronk will return for Australia, joining up again with five-eighth Johnathan Thurston. The Poms would love to have just one of those two players.
Cronk didn’t want to be rested from last weekend’s 14-8 win over New Zealand, but he was and it will have done him the world of good.
New Zealand will play Scotland at Workington early on Saturday, our time. Depending on the winning margin of the Kiwis, the Poms may not only have to beat Australia, but beat them by a certain margin to qualify for the final.
Don’t reach for the calculator. It’s not worth worrying about.
Reckon you can pick the winning team? Build your own dream team with Draftstars daily fantasy and compete on any match. For great odds on the NRL head on over to PlayUp. Imagine what you could be buying instead. Set a deposit limit.
South Sydney have the bye this week, but that hasn't stopped their bad luck with injuries. They have now lost starting front rower Tevita…
Who are the hardest working big men in the NRL?
Billy Slater says the door is open for Queensland's middle forwards to force their way into the squad for the State of Origin opener…
Friday night’s clash between Parramatta and the Dolphins is likely to be a hot one – and not just because the game is being…
Some of the best TV we'll see all year!
The Roosters coach wasn't happy after a number of controversial calls went against them in their loss to the Storm - does he have…
