Kosh wrote:This, I'm afraid, is nonsense. Briscoe takes the ball up all the time in SL - in fact it's a strength of his.
What happened in the Aussie game was that on a number of occasions he got in position to take the ball up only to be pushed away by one of his team mates. Whether this was a deliberate move by Smith to try and protect him or not I don't know, but he was trying to get involved and being thwarted. All he needs to overcome that is more experience and self confidence.
I thought this when watching the 1st half v aus. hard to put into words but the team seem to wrap Briscoe up a fair bit and almost used Shaun Briscoe as cover for Tom. This seemed to be no fault of Tom's but seemed almost a strategy by the England squad. Maybe this was due to the targetting of this side by Ingliss and co that it looked more apparent.