Exclusive: Ex-St Helens man praises Huddersfield Giants and NRL stars as he has say on bench selection

The hype surrounding England is still immensely high after they stunned Samoa last week with a huge 60-6 win over the favourites for the game.

It was seen by many as the best performance from England/Great Britain since the 2006 win over Australia down under and after the game one of the England stars spoke with Serious About Rugby League about how proud he was of the performance.

The man in question was former St Helens star and now Canterbury Bulldogs man Luke Thompson.

“The lads were awesome today, we backed up from the Fiji game,” Thompson said after the game, “We did some good stuff against Fiji and brought it into this game which was really pleasing.

“I thought first 20 minutes we got on top of them and from there we just broke them. We were relentless, we spoke about being relentless all week and we did that for the full 80 minutes going after them and that’s the reason for the scoreline.”

He also revealed how he and the squad took the fact that the focus was on Samoa personally: “There’s been a lot of chat about them leading up into the game and we took it personally because people weren’t really talking about us.

“We know what we’re capable of, we just focussed on ourselves making sure we had our own backyard in order and definitely did that tonight.”

In a bit of a surprise move, Thompson, who has the starting number 10 jersey for England, began the game on the bench.

He did a solid job when coming onto the field as you’d expect from a player of his calibre.

Some players might be frustrated by starting the game on the bench, but as long as England are winning, Thompson doesn’t mind one bit and had praise for both Tom Burgess and Chris Hill: “It was alright, Tom Burgess and Chris Hill did a great job and got us off to a good start and made my job easier when I came on so I didn’t mind it.

“Whatever Shaun Wane wants me to do, I’ll do it. Whatever is best for the team, I’m happy.”