Jamie Peacock recognises England face tougher test from Exiles

Imagine Cesc Fábregas, Nemanja Vidic and a team of the other leading imports to the Premier League taking on England at Old Trafford. Or perhaps Saracens' South African hooker Schalk Brits packing down between Martin Castrogiovanni (of Leicester and Italy) and Soane Tonga'uiha (Northampton and Tonga) to face Martin Johnson's homegrown front row at Twickenham. Both are the stuff of fantasy sport selectors' dreams and in rugby league those dreams will be realised on Friday. The national and international credibility of the England team is in such a state that the Super League clubs have agreed to accommodate a fixture that is as logistically challenging as it is potentially alluring, and released their best overseas players to form an Exiles team to take on England at Headingley. It is not a new concept, as the Exiles are a modern version of the Other Nationalities team who made 27 appearances at irregular intervals between 1904 – when they played England in the first ever rugby league international, at Wigan – and 1975, when they were heavily beaten by Lancashire in a peculiar County Championship fixture in front of a 2,000 attendance in St Helens. They peaked in three consecutive victories over England from 1950-52, not surprisingly with a team that included such greats as Huddersfield's Australian centre Lionel Cooper, the Scottish forward Dave Valentine, and a couple of useful wings. "They were the only times I played in the same team as Brian Bevan," recalled Billy Boston, the Welshman who came north to Wigan, and was happy to switch to the left wing to allow Warrington's chain-smoking Australian to retain his customary place on the right. "Two BBs [the leading try-scorers in league history, with 1,367 between them], and inside us we had people like Dave Valentine, Glyn Moses and Arthur Clues. It was a great team to play in." Now Wigan's full-back, Sam Tomkins, and the champions' loose-forward and captain, Sean O'Loughlin, will clash with their club-mates George Carmont, Pat Richards and Tommy Leuluai, the New Zealand scrum-half who is the Exiles' vice-captain. There will be similarly disorientating experiences for the St Helens forwards James Graham and Tony Puletua, for Adrian Morley and Brett Hodgson of Warrington, and for the Leeds team-mates Jamie Peacock and Danny Buderus, who will be opposing captains on their home pitch. These individual battles have encouraged comparisons to the State of Origin series between Queensland and New South Wales, which has become one of Australia's greatest sporting success stories since it was stumbled upon almost by accident in 1980 – when the Queensland prop Arthur Beetson belted his Parramatta team-mate Mick Cronin to provide hard evidence that the "State against State, mate against mate" marketing was fair dinkum. This game has therefore been introduced as "International Origin", with qualification for the Exiles dependent on a player having started their career in Australia or New Zealand. As a result, the England players will not receive a Test cap. However, as the England coach, Steve McNamara, says: "We might not be able to call it an official Test, but it's going to be a true test for all of us. You only have to look at the quality of the players in the Exiles squad to see that." The enthusiasm of McNamara and his players for the concept is admirable, as they have volunteered for a far tougher challenge than the one provided by France in the mid-season international that England have played in the past four years. Peacock played a key role in the instigation of this fixture, supporting Clint Newton – Hull KR's Australian forward, who has been keen on the idea since he arrived three years ago – in a meeting with the Rugby Football League's chief executive, Nigel Wood, last August. "Without wanting to sound disrespectful to France, because the development of their national team is very important to us too, it wasn't doing them or us much good having a one-sided game like it had been for the last few years," Peacock explained. "Everybody agrees that the State of Origin series has given the Australia players a big advantage over ours when it's come to Test rugby over quite a while now. Hopefully, playing the Exiles will give us something a lot closer to that." But it does carry a major danger. If the Exiles win – and their formidably experienced team are rated as narrow favourites by the majority of bookmakers, partly because England have lost a couple of key players to injury – where would that leave the home team's credibility going into a Four Nations fixture against the full Australia team at Wembley in November? According to Peacock and McNamara, that is a risk they have to take.