We didn’t do ourselves justice on tour, says Great Britain’s Elliott Whitehead

The Lions’ eagerly-anticipated revival, after 12 years, got off to a bad start with a loss to a Tonga Invitational XIII followed by two defeats against New Zealand and ended with an embarrassing 28-10 drubbing in Papua New Guinea.

Whitehead played in all four Tests, during which Great Britain scored only five tries and 32 points, against 12 touchdowns and 77 points conceded.

The former Bradford Bulls and Catalans Dragons forward, who now plays for Canberra Raiders in Australia’s NRL, felt the players selected should have done much better.

“I think it has been a disappointing tour all round,” Whitehead said.

“We didn’t turn up like we should have done and I think all the boys know we’ve let ourselves down.

“We’ll go away and hopefully we’ll come back next year as a group and we can fix stuff up.”

Great Britain surged into a 10-0 lead in Port Moresby, but a try on the stroke of half-time sparked a flurry of 28 unanswered points by the Kumuls.

“I think we were on top, but we just couldn’t find a way through,” Whitehead added.

“They scored just before half-time which got them back into the game.

“All credit to them, in the second half they had the ball quite a lot in the first 15 minutes which took a lot of gas out of us.

“They scored some lucky tries off kicks, I’d say, but we have to be better than that.

“We’ll go away and hopefully we can fix that up.”

Whitehead reckons not playing a mid-season Test or warm-up game was a factor.

“Hopefully we can get that back next year and that will help us going into Australia at the end of the year,” he said.

Papua New Guinea is the only country where rugby league is the national sport.

Of the experience of touring there, Whitehead reflected: “It has been great, the locals have really made us feel welcome.

“They are from Papua New Guinea, but they’ve still been behind us and they’ve been a pleasure to meet. The overall experience has been great.”