England boss Shaun Wane explains omission of Wigan Warriors’ Luke Thompson, Junior Nsemba and Liam Marshall

England boss Shaun Wane has moved to explain why Wigan Warriors trio Luke Thompson, Junior Nsemba and Liam Marshall have not been named in his 24-man squad to take on Australia.

The three players were on the losing side during the Grand Final and to add insult to injury, on Sunday they were informed that they would not be included in Wane’s England squad to take on the Kangaroos in the Ashes.

The news will have come as a huge blow for each of them and, given all three were widely expected to be named in the squad, their omissions came as something of a shock, especially Thompson’s, with the prop considered considered to be England’s best on his day.

However, Wane believes the Warriors forward has been short of his best since returning from injury at the start of September and therefore he didn’t think it was right to pick the 30-year-old.

Shaun Wane on Wigan Warriors trio omission

“He was close,” Wane said on the Wigan prop. “His form earlier in the year was fantastic.

“I’m a big Luke Thompson fan but he got injured, quite a bad injury, came back and is yet to get them levels he had before. He wasn’t far off, he’s a good player, Luke Thompson, I’ve lots of time for him but that was a tough one in particular.”

Nsemba misses out after having something of an up and down year with the Warriors. He has shown glimpses of his best in Cherry and White but underwhelming spells saw him lose his spot in Matt Peet’s starting line-up, with the back-rower being used off the bench towards the end of the campaign.

As such, Wane feels as though he has improvements to make before he can return to the England fold.

“Yeah, it weren’t difficult,” Wane said when asked about leaving Nsemba out. “He’s a good athlete, he’s a really, really good kid, but there’s areas in his game that he needs to get better at.

“I look at it very different to a lot of people and I’m not going to into detail to dig Junior out but there’s things he needs to get better at and there’s people in the squad that need to improve on certain things, same as me as head coach, it’s all about continuous improvement but Junior is definitely one of them.”

The decision to leave Dream Team winger Liam Marshall raised eyebrows, too.

“I had a call with Marshy, he’s a great winger and I’m his biggest fan,” Wane added. “But, it’s a tough job what we have as coaches to pick between all the talented wingers we’ve got and we have to make a call and we have to imagine who’s going to get us the win at Wembley and sadly, Marshall wasn’t in that. He’s a good player.”

Wigan do have three players in the England squad with Harry Smith, Ethan Havard and Jake Wardle getting the nod.