Your favourite rugby league podcasters, analysts, and journalists would like to look down the barrel of the camera and hold your gaze for a second before they rip into England’s performance from Saturday morning. England are not mathematically eliminated from the World Cup just yet, they would like to remind you. After all, progression to the semi-finals is not impossible.

It’s just pretty bloody hard now.

Defeat to Tonga has meant that for England to make it out of the pool stage, a rather difficult-to-imagine set of circumstances, none of which are really in England’s hands, has to unfold. Tonga must beat Samoa, and England must come out of matches with France and Papua New Guinea with a better points difference than Samoa. Thus, to say that Samoa’s own 78-4 victory against France has not made it easy for Brian McDermott’s side would be somewhat of an understatement.

So England’s status in the World Cup sits at the ‘we must remember’ stage. But while we must colour our criticisms with the knowledge that premium economy flights home won’t have been booked just yet, the prevailing sense around their chances is not an optimistic one.

McDermott is convinced that there are signs of promise to take into the next few games, and to be fair he isn’t miles off the mark. AJ Brimson starting at fullback was probably his most hotly-debated call, but a few defensive lapses aside, his attacking play was on the stronger side. Hugo Savala was arguably England’s best player on debut, providing some of the only moments of explosive attacking inspiration, and Zach Eckersley was able to put an early drop behind him to get stuck into a game-long battle with his opposite number Dallin Watene-Zelezniak.

The plan (a word I promised myself I would not repeat as much in this piece as I have in previous ones) did work for long periods of time. England’s second-phase play produced a staggering 26 offloads, almost three times the NRL average this year of 9.1 per game. Physically, they weren’t too bad either. Tonga’s terrifying forward pack was matched for the opening 20 minutes or so of each half. England started both of them as the better side; they just didn’t have the depth to maintain it. The signs of promise are definitely there, but it may already be far too late for them to develop into anything useful.

Reaction on this side of the world has tended to go one of two ways. Some have pointed the finger outward at the ridiculous and lop-sided structure that has been selected for this tournament. As a game, we’ve picked ten teams to compete, which is slightly strange but not abnormal providing you split them into two pools of five right?

Right?

Oh.

Once you’ve heard Mark Chapman on BBC radio laughing at the way in which the game has managed to shoot itself in the foot once again, you can see the sheer absurdity of a format that sees you essentially out of the tournament should you fail to win your first game. I’m not going to go full Paul Cooke, tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorist and claim that the English game is being deliberately undermined and destabilised by the format so that it is easier for the NRL to swoop in and claim they need to take control. I would, however, be willing to say that it is certainly in the economic and social interests of those with the power down under to have a final four of Australia, New Zealand, Samoa, and Tonga.

At the same time, it’s hard not to view Saturday as a reality check that requires us to look inward and get slightly existential about the state of our game and its administration. The structure had made it so that Saturday’s game against Tonga, England’s first of the tournament, was the most important of the pool stage. The situation was far from ideal, but we had also known that would be the case for almost a year, so why did they decide to make the trip to Perth a forty-hour-plus slog consisting of four different legs of the journey?

It was not until the week of the game that McDermott could even have a full training session with his side. So lament the structure as much as you’d like, but the RFL have hardly made the process much easier on their part. If this is simply a symptom of what the international game has become and how we treat it, then this should, for all intents and purposes, be the moment that changes.

The mood down under after the first round of fixtures is immensely positive. Attendances are breaking records and TV viewership isn’t lagging too far behind either. The vibe is one of ‘this product is great, how can we get more of it?’. Yet on this side of the world, as we assess the lack of international fixtures or the possibility of a mid-season test series, we’re instead about to force through another team into the Super League and extend the domestic season again.

British tennis player Dan Evans once came under fire for his comment that the only thing the British public loves more than a British winner is a British loser. A pat on the back and a BBC montage to that song that always makes you cry can be enough for an attempt at reaching glory to be forever immortalised, allowing us to forget, actually, you never really stood a chance.

Sentiments towards English rugby league aren’t too dissimilar. The achievable dream is always a ‘brave’ exit at the semi-final stage, to a team that we can take solace in knowing was lined with future legends of the game. But is there anything courageous about an exit in the pool stage? Will we be brave losers? Or does an early flight indicate that, if anything, we’re just losers?

So, as I come to the end of this dressing down of England’s ill-prepared and now-slightly-doomed World Cup campaign, allow me to reach off the screen and remind you, yes you, that England are not out of this tournament. Progression to the semi-finals is of course, not completely impossible.

It’s just pretty bloody hard now.