Rugby League World Cup: Sam Tomkins says Samoa have 'improved massively' since England loss

England's semi-final opponents Samoa have "improved massively" since being thrashed by the hosts in the World Cup's opening game, says Sam Tomkins.

Tomkins watched Samoa's 20-18 quarter-final win over Tonga in Warrington on Sunday while working as a BBC pundit.

England, runners-up in 2017, are aiming to reach a second successive final.

They ran in 10 tries in a 60-6 win over Samoa in Newcastle on 15 October, but the England captain said: "We won't be looking back at that first week."

He continued: "We played a Samoa side that played really poorly, they had some injuries, and since then they've improved massively.

"The week leading into that first game, all we got told was how good Samoa were and we concentrated on ourselves. This week we'll get told they'll want revenge, there's a massive gap and we're now the favourites. Well, we'll not listen to that either and we're going to focus on ourselves.

"The luxury going into this was Samoa and Tonga both cause very similar threats so we knew what our gameplan is going to be next week before this game kicked off."

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Shaun Wane's team beat Papua New Guinea 46-6 in the last eight on Saturday, with some pundits suggesting their first-half display was among their best ever and could have been good enough to beat any team in the competition.

England have never won the World Cup before, although the combined Great Britain team has previously done so and lifted the trophy most recently in 1972.

Asked if it is easy to block out the external noise regarding their chances of winning a home World Cup, Catalans Dragons player Tomkins said: "It's not, but that's as it should be.

"We're the England team playing on English soil, with a great chance of doing something special.

"There should be lots of noise and we embrace it, but inside our bubble when we get back into camp in the morning, we'll understand that it's about us and what we do on the field, and we'll block everything out."

'There's no jealousy of people getting picked'

Tomkins has praised all 24 players within the England squad for their contributions at the World Cup to date.

Every player was selected for at least one appearance during the group stage and competition for places in Wane's matchday 17 is fierce.

"It's tough because sometimes people have to take on slightly different roles than they'd have at club level, such as people starting on the bench," said Tomkins.

"We've got 24 players that start every week for their club, but there are guys on the bench and guys not even in the 17.

"The guys who haven't been in the 17 have genuinely added value every single week.

"There's no jealousy of people getting picked, every single day in training we're all trying to make each other better, and that's credit to the boys that haven't played."