A few things:
1) Typical England performance. As usually, they can talk the talk but cannot walk the walk. They get their largest home crowd in 16 years and they put in a crapshack performance like that. They show a lot of potential at times (e.g Tomkins, however, it seems like it will be a matter of time before RU poach him), but it becomes nullified by the brainsnaps and fundamental mistakes. As a lot of other Poms have said on the TRL forum, this has pretty much been the story for decades, but has become more commonplace since the likes of Hanley/Offiah/Gregory/Schofield/Connolly/Edwards/Betts etc. moved on by the second half of the 90s. Although he singlehandedly got Balmain to the GF in 1988, I don't even think someone of the outstanding calibre of Hanley could've saved that English side out there with the amount of stupid mistakes they made.
It makes little sense to talk tactics if you don't do the basics right. Had they not done of the stupid crap they did (e.g. Chase kicking early in the tackle count....does he think he's playing Union?? One of the kicks directly led to Williams' try), the scoreline would've been a lot closer than a 16 pt margin. They've still got a long way to go to match the progress that New Zealand have made over the last 5-10 yrs. It's little wonder they've only beaten Australia in a test 3 times in the last 16 yrs (of which, only one of those wins was away from home, in Sydney in 2006).
2) Rangi Chase: HAHAHAHA! Where do I begin? To think that this guy won the Super League equivalent of the Dally M award says a lot about the level of talent in the Super League. Don't let ppl fool you into thinking their competition is on par with the NRL. IT'S NOT! The guy is a fraud to the nth degree. It doesn't surprise me that he said things before the game like "I came here because I wanted a new challenge". He did it to cover up the fact that a player like him will never make it in the number one professional rugby league competition (NRL). The fact that he was also made eligible for England is a joke as well (the RFL being responsible for that), but the same can also be said for Tony Williams and Akuila Uate's eligibility as well. Anyways, if England want to beat New Zealand next week to qualify for the final, Chase must be the first player to be given the flick.
3) Nice to see the game back at Wembley. 42000 is OK, a little bit disappointing, but nevertheless with the amount of positive publicity this game received during the week, hopefully it was enough to encourage the RFL to take more tests to Wembley in the future (the next one hopefully should be the 2013 RLWC group match between England and Australia). Had it been a sunny day, I have no doubt we could've got 50000+. Also, hopefully, this will mean that the RFL will think about taking England/Australia matches beyond the 25000 seat stadiums, as well as England/New Zealand matches. England or New Zealand will, for a long time, be that second team that will contending for that spot with Australia in a tournament final (Australia haven't missed the final of a major RL tournament since the inaugural 1954 World Cup). England/New Zealand matches should also receive a lot more promotion
