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2019 Test Double Header - Fiji 22-20 PNG & NZ 23-8 GB @ Christchurch

Perth Red

Post Whore
Messages
65,411
Sat here watching pondering if this is the worse attacking gb/English RL side I have seen in my 40 years following them.if not the worse it must be up there with the sht’est ive seen.
 
Messages
11,411
GB need to do what the mighteh mighteh Engerlund Yawnion team has done and import a few Islander players for some muscle
 

KeepingTheFaith

Referee
Messages
25,235
Lol

Bateman makes it clear he didn't score, ref sends it up as a try anyway.

Between that and the "held" that wasn't, Sutton is doing his best to make this a close game.
 

Vee

First Grade
Messages
5,075
GB will blame Wayne Bennett for the loss to PNG, but it’s not the coach’s fault. The seeds for this mess were sewn a long time ago

Really, after all that, was it worth it?

It was supposed to be great. Why wouldn’t it be? After all it was in the name. The Great Britain Lions.

Here they were in the southern hemisphere reformed for the first time since 2007, and undertaking their first tour since 1996.

But while a name may say one thing, the results and performances have been quite the opposite. The conclusion to this tour looked to be finishing in positive style when Blake Austin and Josh Hodgson scored early tries for the Lions in Port Moresby.

Instead, Papua New Guinea came back firing through Watson Boas and Edwin Ipape, before Justin Olam, Alex Johnston and Nixon Putt condemned the Lions to a first defeat against the Kumuls since 1990.

This tour will be remembered for a dreary loss against Tonga, consecutive defeats against New Zealand, and this abject defeat to a PNG side with players from the third tier of the English game.

It will live long in the memory for the enforced selection of Blake Austin on the wing, taking six halfbacks and just two wingers, the lack of Celtic players in the Lions squad the moment the British press, unfairly, turned on Wayne Bennett and blamed him for all of the sport’s ills, while most of those can be laid firmly at the door of the governing body.

For the last 12 years the four composite nations of Great Britain have played under their own banners of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.

Until it was mothballed in 2007, the Great Britain brand had been a bastion of tradition, history and prestige, not just in the UK but also overseas. That white jersey with a red and blue chevron meant something, and was immediately associated with symbolic moments in the game’s history.

Whether it was Jonathan Davies’ try at Wembley in 1994, Henderson Gill’s “bit of a boogie” in the Third Ashes Test in 1988 or Adrian Morley clobbering Robbie Kearns and getting sent off after 12 seconds – everybody has their own Great Britain moment.

The jersey – and the privilege of wearing it – stood for so much more. It represented Welshman Clive Sullivan, the first black man to captain a side from the home nations, and Dave Valentine and David Rose, the only two Scots to ever win a World Cup in any sport back in 1954.

So when they reformed for the first time in over a decade you would expect that coming-together to be representative and all-encompassing of the talent from the best four nations.

But after a 12-year hiatus the Lions tour has been nothing short of underwhelming. Scrap that, embarrassing. The main bone of contention was Australian-born players – Blake Austin, Jackson Hastings and Lachlan Coote – being picked, amid the non-selection of Celtic players.

No Welshmen were named, the only Scot was Coote, and the sole Irish representative was England-born Joe Philbin. Immediately many thought Bennett – who also coaches England – was using this tour as a proving ground for the 2021 World Cup, a fact confirmed by some of his comments.

Bennett told reporters last week that Hastings had a chance to nail down a permanent halfback role heading into the 2021 World Cup.

“We have got to find one in the next 12 months or so before the World Cup so he has got an opportunity there and I just hope he grabs it,” he said. Speaking about his playmakers, in a separate interview he said: “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.”

But that’s not Bennett’s fault. He didn’t cut funding to development officers in Scotland and Wales, – while the CEO of the governing body and now head of the International Federation Nigel Wood, retained a salary of £314,000 ($585,000) – meaning that the chronic underinvestment in the other three nations meant the team was exclusively English.

It’s not Bennett’s fault, either, that the British game has been unable to breed top-level halfbacks in the last 20 years. And it’s not his fault this pointless tour was shoehorned in the middle of a World Cup cycle to try and earn some cash for a sport without a penny to its name.

It’s not Bennett’s fault that players knocked on, kicked out on the full or missed tackles. The squad he selected is full of NRL and Super League talent. Sure, his side was perhaps light in certain areas, but with titles, countless caps and experience at the elite level they should not be losing to a side whose halfback played for Doncaster in the third division. Instead, at times against PNG, it was Great Britian who looked like little kids lost in a shopping centre.

Jonny Lomax knocks on, an out-of-position Austin has a few clangers, Gareth Widdop looked like he had blown a gasket.

The problem is that when the going gets tough, British players have an inability to stick it out, stay calm and grind their way to victory.

They have not been steeled in Origin-type intensity as Australia benefits from, and their natural talents are not on a par with Tonga or New Zealand. Under pressure, they falter, a fact evidenced over the last 25 years.

Bennett has slowly been changing that, shown by England’s upturn in form with three wins from their last four against the Kiwis, and the defeat to Australia in the 2017 World Cup final, proof they are getting closer.

The seeds of the problems of this tour have been sewn long before he took charge of England in 2016. They are intrinsic to the fabric of the British game. Jamie Peacock is the team manager of the this tour, despite having next to no pedigree in that area. Kevin Sinfield, who was a brilliant player, has no knowledge of being a director of rugby evidenced now at international and at club level with Leeds.

They brought the Lions back because the term to describe it once upon a time was great. Sadly, it isn’t any longer.

If you wanted a word to sum up rugby league in Great Britain, it isn’t great. It is expedient. And after all of this, the British will still blame Bennett.

https://www.foxsports.com.au/nrl/nr...h/news-story/0da940b0feec7af8b7a231955a650821
 

t-ba

Post Whore
Messages
55,529
Executive gets remunerated

In other news, capitalism is the primary organising system of our modern economy...
 

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