England’s Rugby League World Cup campaign is all-but over despite a second victory in three group games, as they failed to rack up enough points against Papua New Guinea.

Barring a monumental win from Tonga on Sunday morning, England will be heading home on Monday after a promising start quickly faded and turned into a frustrating afternoon.

A lengthy inquest for the English game will now likely begin – but in the meantime, here are our big talking points from the win in Wollongong..

England get the bench wrong

England’s approach to the six-man bench last week was excellent, with the right players coming on at exactly the right times to keep the momentum flowing.

Here, it almost felt like the opposite.

Why Mikey Lewis wasn’t introduced until far too late in proceedings is anyone’s guess, given the impact he had last week and how England effectively had nothing to lose in the pursuit of points.

Brad O’Neill and Jez Litten have worked well in tandem; having just one of them here didn’t really work out. Kallum Watkins was also fairly muted when he came on, and it didn’t really feel joined up enough from the England team.

It was far from the biggest factor why England are going home, but it didn’t help.

Junior Nsemba struggles

It’s not been the best tournament for the young Wigan Warriors forward. The key word there is young; it’s easy to forget he’s still only 22 and playing in his first World Cup, given how he’s been thriving in Super League for so long.

Nsemba will hopefully look back on this tournament as formative for his career. But the fact he was taken off midway through the second half on Friday underlined how he had another difficult game against the Kumuls.

He’ll return to Wigan stronger for the experience in 2027, and Nsemba is categorically a part of England’s long-term plan. But he hasn’t quite hit the heights some hoped for – with his withdrawal here against Papua New Guinea underlining how the coaching staff perhaps felt the same.

Why did the game-plan change?

Perhaps it was the pursuit and pressure of points. Perhaps it was intended all along. But for 20 minutes, England’s running game had Papua New Guinea in tatters – and then suddenly.. they drifted away from it.

The strategy appeared to switch towards hoisting the ball up in the air at the ends of sets, rather than England chancing their arm and trying to cut the Kumuls open like they had been doing. For all the – unwarranted – critics George Williams has, he was thriving in that opening quarter, and then effectively had his legs cut off beneath him.

There will be questions over the format and questions over where England go next. But for a brief period in that first half, it felt like McDermott’s side had enough in them to score the points they needed. But for whatever reason, they fell away from the plan and reverted to a type which was never going to be good enough.