In an alternative universe, Tomkins and Lomax would have played predominantly in the halves for their clubs, Kyle Eastmond would still be playing RL and Danny Brough would not be pretending he's Scottish, and we would look pretty good at 6 and 7. We may even have won today.

^^^

Erm how about - Inglis, Smith, Cronk, Thurston for starters

Yep, we should hold events in Manchester and Liverpool too, like the Grand Final or the Four Nations Final. Oh wait.....

Yes of course there are working class people in London etc, but I'll wager the average new fan from London has a fair bit more to spend that the average new fan from our heartlands, and is thus more attractive to sponsors.

I've never understood the argument for reducing the amount of teams in Super League. All you do is reduce the chances of playing regularly for young English players. Would Luke Gale for example have still been in Super League if we only had ten teams? He only got a move to Bradford after leaving London. If there were only ten teams in the League would he have been picked up at all or would he have to go to a Championship club and gone part time?

All you do by cutting down the teams is deny 40+ players a living and thousands of fans the opportunity to watch Super League.We are nearing saturation point as it is with watching Wigan play Leeds or Saints up to five times a season. Cutting the teams means 'same old, same old' and Sky would pretty soon tire of that.

The argument that it would improve standards is a fallacy.Take a look at the Scottish Premier if you don't believe me. Celtic and Rangers both won European honours in the days when the Scottish League had 22 teams. It now has 10 and the standard is about English League 1 or 2 level (3rd or 4th division in old money)

The Aussies did the basics, built pressure, ran hard especially their 2nd rows along the centre channels and waited for their chances to come.

Sure GI made some great runs and was hard to put down, but then some of our players were too. The spine of 9, 7 and 6 were consistently very good not exceptionally outstanding.

We also made breaks, put players through gaps and broke the line, but we made mistakes - we could easily have been 3 scores better through simply catching the ball.

The Aussies didn't make any mistakes.

Imagine if we'd played error free rugby, the score one would be far closer.

That's why I said there was no one head and shoulders above us in the Aussie team.

I agree with putting a game in Liverpool, but why not one in Manchester? That has to be the biggest oversight currently in our game. I know Salford fans won't like it, but I think they should have merged with some other clubs in greater manchester to form a team called 'Manchester X's'.

GF doesn't count because 99% of the people there will be fans of the clubs and it doesn't have the same appeal as internationals. I can tell you when the 6 nations will be this year but I don't even know what month the RU playoffs are.