England boss Shaun Wane hails ‘good performance’ but makes improvement admission

Mikey Lewis earned plaudits on his international debut, crossing for a try on his first cap alongside a brace from Tom Johnstone and the opener from Wigan loanee and Grand Final winning centre Toby King.

Wearing the number seven shirt for England, Harry Smith landed three goals from four attempts and was again the controlling figure in the halves, allowing Hull KR’s Lewis to utilise his dangerous running game, producing the first line break of the clash which led up to King’s opening effort.

“I thought it was really good,” Wane reflected.

“It wasn’t perfect, but I thought it was a really good performance in patches, considering we’ve only trained twice and we have a young half-back partnership.

“They're a good team with a lot of NRL players. They're bigger athletes and a far bigger team than us.

“But I do honestly know that we can improve on that.”

Kristian Woolf’s Tonga crossed for three tries, with a late Tolutau Koula four-pointer setting up a tense finish at the Totally Wicked Stadium, six years after the dramatic World Cup semi-final encounter in Auckland.

Starford To'a and Tyson Frizell also scoring in the opening clash, with the latter representing his third nation on debut.

“They will improve and we need to improve,” Wane admitted.

“It’s going to be ‘game on’ next Saturday, no question. They won’t like losing like I wouldn’t like losing.

“We need to improve on tiny details in both attack and defence.”