They've got a ru phone in on 5live now and one of the 1st callers is a knob who said the reason for Englands defeat is league players going to ru and not tackling properly the fact that there was only Ashton in the team who started in rl makes the statement laughable.

England are dire in attack.
With such as Ashton, the Young brothers and a host of fatties that can't scrum they will win nothing.

But Ashton can't tackle. He's making a fool of himself. Needs to get a proper job.

That is why he was no loss to RL and Wigan were happy to let him go

Exactly. At Wigan he got found by opposition coaches as soon as he broke into Wigan's 1st team and got targeted.

That its taken,what 4 years?, for the union supporters and experts to have suddenly discovered he can't defend is laughable...i thought it is supposed to be be the more intelligent code of rugby?

Ashton was a fine attacking player though, especially from fullback. He seems to have gone rapidly downhill in that aspect too.

This is a list of Irish players missing



Fergus McFadden and Eoin Reddan Paul O'Connell, Tommy Bowe and Stephen Ferris Simon Zebo, Gordon D'Arcy, Chris Henry, Craig Gilroy and Jonathan Sexton Darren Cave, and Dave McSharry and then during the game they lost Keith Earls and Luke Marshall and Luke Fitzgerald

Fair point about Ireland, wasn't aware of that. Then again, even when Italy's talisman Parisse was sin binned, they never looked like doing anything.

It's odd isn't it- he was their hero five minutes ago, and they were lauding him as some kind of bizarre proof that RL players have to move to fulfil their rugby potential.

As for tackling- he's not a magnificent tackler, but then in their amazing world where every body type apparently has their place in the team because everyone is allegedly a specialist, you'd think the rest of them could do it. Especially with two extra players knocking about.

Must be on something then.