so what do people think?

coming of the wigan forum as wanted to do wellwishes for tommy and surprise they are all now hating the concept and finding every flaw possible.

personally i think it is a great concept that gives an extra test for the england team. You could tell that the exiles wanted to win and gave a better game than sorry to say france, wales or ireland could of.

unfortunately weather had a massive impact on the way the game was played tonight was similar to the game we played against leeds. Also the fact the exiles lost 8 players in the last week of build up didnt help i am sure if the weather is right and the injured recover we will see a different game come 4th july.

on the stats side of it there must be some interest in the game as the crowd attendance was 11,084 which is better than most weekly round attendences at some clubs and this is still the infancy. My hope is that the concept grows as i am a big fan of international RL and unfortunately we do not get enough of it.

tried watching this exhibition match and was bored rigid..and to be honest cant see the aussies crapping themselves at what we have to offer...as for lulu at wigan its a shame and can now see every coach sh****ng themselves incase any of there players gets seriously injured so in future years you`ll end up watching 2nd or 3rd choice players..just like in footy players pulling out with imaginery injuries..scrap it..its not as if we are gonna give the aussies a run for there money

I was concerned at the level of the England performance. The exiles had already lost several players but still managed to run us fairly close.

As a spectacle it was not great. Lots of errors plus the two defences were pretty strong on the night.

I think the jury is still out on the concept.

I'm not really sure what purpose the game serves.

It's supposed to be a bridge between Super League and international so we can find out what players can handle the intensity but is the intensity that much higher than a normal Super League game? Wigan and Warrington are both better than the Exiles team IMO so what does the Exiles game show about players that we don't already know?

I wonder which players did we learn tonight can handle the cauldron of international rugby and should be picked to face the Aussies this winter?

People used to say for ages lets have Lancashire v Yorkshire Origin then when it happened it was a bit of a damp squib. Then they said lets have a four nations style tournament with England, Wales, Ireland, France in etc and they had that for a while and it was pretty tame as well. Then there was the call for this all star overseas team vs England and it seems to be another damp squib.

I have struggled with the concept of the England v Exiles matches to a degree!!! Yes they offer England some warm up/team building matches against a team of experienced battle hardened players. But if we want a concept which will eventually grow into a match with the brutality, entertainment of a state of origin match, which the Aussies use to basically choose their national side, instead of England playing meaningless but useful games like the Exiles match, why dont England play the England Knights??? Im sure there are a few Knights players who would love to show the current England manager how well they can play, and also show the current England players why they need to be dropped!!! These games can then be used to see which players, young/older/experienced/inexperienced etc, can play in their selected positions, and then the England squad/team can then be chosen from those that perform best!!! The fact that a potential England place is up for grabs will be better motivation than playing games against the Exiles, and one sided matches against Ireland....Just my thoughts!!!

ps I posted this on the Wigan board also
Matt

With the best will in the world we will only see a watered down Anzac team because the best players are still in the NRL but it could be a good testing ground for GB hopefuls . The weather played a big part in ruining any spectacle.

The weather had a huge influence on both the game and the gate. As regards the Wigan Site going into meltdown because of the injury all I can say is that Wigan fans are generally interested in nothing apart from their own club. Had it been a Leeds or Wire player some of them would have been celebrating.

Was it the best game of rugby league any of us have ever seen? No.

Was it the best contest that it was possible to create for England mid-season? Absolutely. England looked up for the game and the Exiles, while not fluent, certainly didn't take it lying down. The conditions prevented it from being a free-flowing classic, but it surely gives the England set-up a better insight into where we need to improve than battering somebody would have.

Of course, I'd still like to see us playing France and Wales but I have no problem with this fixture/concept.

I think it's funny that people are saying the Exiles are finished because of a declining quality of import, when the best England have done so far is beat them by 8 points. We'll cross that particular bridge when/if we give them a good hiding. Otherwise, let's see how it pans out rather than scrapping it based on speculation.

In terms of what the concept is for, surely it is for giving England a chance to get a run out as a team, and trying to build combinations. One of the reasons for Australia's ability to function so smoothly as a side is the continuity they have in their team: Thurston, Slater, Smith, Cronk etc know each other's games inside out. Of course, they have the luxury that those players are also extremely talented.

Rugby league fans will moan and moan until the game itself dies, and then they'll really have something to moan about. In a way I'm surprised at Sally because I like his posts on Warrington, but sometimes I do think that he - like many other RL people - live in a halcyon era where Hanley and co were hammering the Aussies and we didn't need big ideas to try to change our position within the game.

For what feels like the 134th straight time*, I agree 100% with the form, tone and content of your post.

*Can't recall what I disagreed with 135 posts ago. Do you like marmite? Maybe it was that.

I do think we need big ideas but this England v Exiles is not a big idea and it won't make a scrap of difference to standards against Australia. It's just an extra congestion for the season and it doesn't tell us anything about the players that we don't already know. The idea that places in the England team are up for grabs baffles me because what happens if a player has a great game in the Exiles match and another player is in better form at the end of the season in the playoffs and Grand Final. What tells us more...should the guy who had the great game against the Exiles get precedence because of how he's performed in the pressure cooker of international rugby or should the guy who's been in better form in the playoffs get precedence...?

As a big idea I'd rather cut the number of teams in SL to 10 which would mean you would have a more intense competition every week. The Aussies have intensity every week because they have the players to support the number of teams they have in their league, but we don't. In fact at the moment we probably can only support 9 teams. If you cut Salford, Wakefield, Castleford, London Broncos and Widnes you would release a pool of players who are good enough eg Holdsworth, Smith, Fox, Mathers, Chase, Huby, Griffin etc who would get signed by the top 9 and displace players at the lower end. Also fewer teams would mean the salary cap could increase as there would be fewer teams by which to divide the TV money.

For too long we have used the argument that its a numbers game, we need more numbers to allow more spaces for players to come through, but this is not true, its not like there are loads of class players potentially international standard, who are stuck outside of SL having to play in the Championship because of shortage of places. There are a lot of absolute rank average English players playing in SL especially at the lower clubs, players that will never in a million years get near international standards. So if the issue is that talented youngsters are not getting a chance its down to the fact clubs are making poor decisions keeping the no hopers hanging around in the first team.

I know cutting the numbers breeds opposition and it caused a massive storm when it was done in Welsh RU not least because this involved mergers, but Welsh RU had been in the doldrums for ages before they did that, and since then they've won 3 Grand Slams in seven years which is up with their record in the 1970s. Now had they just kept the number of teams the same and instead played a mid season fixture, Wales v overseas players playing at Welsh clubs, would that have had the same impact....?