not imo, poor performance was the one and only reason we performed so poorly,

We picked the best team available, had the best coach available, but simply played poorly and made mistakes professional players simply shouldnt have made

Tony Smith had a great track record, but our disorganisation and general inability to defend has to be his fault

'' think there's a happy medium to be found. They've gone too far with the wrestling style in the tackle and we've got to look to have more discipline and grind it out on occasions. Our problem was the refereeing to their style. Because we had to adapt on the run, every tackle you went in to you had to concentrate that much harder and apply new techniques. The focus was so much on that that it drained you. We had to change the way we defended and because it wasn't an instinctive thing, it was energy sapping. That's why people came up with the mistakes they did. ''

I think this paragraph is very interesting from waht jamie said. its nice too see someone providing an explanation and some analysis as to why players that we see perform so well all year suddenly become so error ridden. I also full agree with him about having a 12 week pre season to really get fit and practice skills. the sooner the clubs agree to get rid of four fixtures and the season is aligned with the nrl starting in march the better.

The Australian influence is here people. More moaning off the pitch has seemed to occurred more by our players!

Christ someone with a sensible comment about our failing in the World Cup. I thought I was going insane as nobody else appeared to notice it.

All the Aussie games were ref'd by NRL refs bar the final which they lost! Even if they had all played under the same rule interpretations we had a poor squad selection. 22 going instead of 24.
Awful team selection. The attack didn't have a clue and the defence wasn't worthy of the description. Smith was not up to the job and out of his depth.
Add a divided squad and that was the recipe for disaster.
What we got was a disaster.
However it wasn't the disaster that it would have been if the WC had been played in this country.
I hope the report into England's World Cup isn't a whitewash.

All the ‘grapple’ did was highlight how ineffective we are at opening up defences. Personally I wouldn’t mind the play the balls slowing down, it would mean a team would have to work to break teams down. Leeds/Saints success is based largely on quick PTBs and broken field running, without that England looked lost.

the first NZ - AUS game was reffed by Klein too, which they won comfortably.

Im bored of this wrestling excuse. We played rubbish, we dropped the ball, we passed like idiots, we missed tackles. What because they wrestled on the ground a bit longer than in SL?!? Get over it. We were over confident and badly organised.

Spot on.