The former is that curhberson is an established first team player, probably one of three higher paid in the squad. Luke briscoe is a reserve team player doing a job. He's never going to be the finished article. It's not feasible to keep quality all the way through the squad

We know that, that is a given. But Saints had a near full team of fringe players last night, and were a quality above, so that is no excuse. There is no excuse for the cowardly defensive efforts of Briscoe last night. Cuthbertson may well have given away field position for two trys, and stupidly. But it was the efforts of others that resulted in the tries.

Well, I hope we don't see that panic off-load game again. A bit more control and respecting possession and the entire complexion of the game could have changed. We could have easily been 1-2 scores up at half-time. Losing Ava was a big blow, especially as he's generally a calmer head and solid defensively. I'd imagine we'll have him back for London though.

Terrible response from the players at the start of the second half, even though the first two Saints tries were fluky scrappy efforts (a better defensive attitude from us should have stopped both).

Not sure Agar has it sewn-up just yet, although interviews with him and Sinfield before the game seem to imply it's his to lose. It's probably unfair to single out individuals when the issue (IMO) was with the general tactics adopted by the coaching staff, but here goes anyway.

Cuthbertson started well but as has been pointed out, some of his errors killed us at times.

Walker too guilty of overplaying. Lui okay, some good kicks; Myler took his try well. Dwyer good for the most part.

I'd like to see Hurrell play with a bit more control next season, not sure if he has it in him - some lovely interplay with Handley, who is growing in stature every week. Not sure it is fair to blame Briscoe for all the tries from Naiqama - Hurrell has to take some responsibility there and be smarter with his defensive positioning.

Newman looks to have regained his confidence, some really strong carries and defence.

Wasn't blaming him for any of his try's, it was the other three he was pathetic in.

Thought we competed well in the first half and was unlucky not to be in front.
The no try by Handley was a typical Kendall error.
Saints forwards were different class running it in hard and tackling hard too.
Lomax ran the show and their centres were head and shoulders above ours.
Cuthbertson like many have said gave away tries but I think he was dead on his feet.
How many minutes did he play?
Myler, Walker, Briscoe all p$sh poor.
Sutcliffe why on earth we stick with him and the same goes for Ferres was he playing last night?
Well done Saints who were a pleasure to watch.

I think some of the passing from 1st receiver was woefull last night. Passing over the head or 1/2 a yard behind, slows or stops the oncoming player, limits there options on whther to run or pass. Lunt looked tired from dummy half and Dwyer erratic as always. All these culminated in a disjointed attack and i think the final score was a fair reflection on the game.
We obviously tried to disrupt saints with an offload game and after the half time talk they had the measure of it

Yes I was scratching my head over hooker last night. Some of Lunt’s distribution is superb, cleaner and quicker than Dwyer. Lunt plays the team in, Dwyer plays more for himself. Neither really has the whole game.

The sooner we can bring Johnson through the better, but we need more consistency from dummy half in the meantime.

Don’t know if it was because of the amount of defending we were doing, but too many players anonymous last night. I get frustrated we can’t seem to put a shot on in the middle these days - Ferres is probably closest but Peacock, Leuluai, Delaney, Morley, Ellis, Glanville even - we just don’t have that bite in D any more it seems.

What ought to focus the club is that a side almost at full strength and quite likely paid well above the cap with 2 marquee players was outclassed by a side half full of reserves whose total salaries would be way lower.

Puts GH's whiny 'its not my fault' piece about recruitment a few weeks back in perspective.

Maybe I watched a different game, but I thought that first half we were much the better side and with a bit more luck/ better refereeing we'd have been going in with 4 tries under our belts - and it would have been deserved.

Then half time happened, Saints had early luck and questionable refereeing decisions give them early tries and a real head of steam and we lost the plot trying too hard to score on every play.

It's interesting that after our two very impressive wins nobody thought there was a massive gulf in class between us and Catalans or Huddersfield - they just had bad games and we did well - but a game we did excellently in for the first 40 goes South and all of a sudden we're terrible, there's a massive gulf in class between Saints and us. We're capable of 20 minutes of self destruction and that's what happened last night and against a team with enough quality throughout to take advantage. That first half suggests to me we're not far off. The second half says we need to keep working, not panic.

That was very nearly our strongest side. Ward and another prop aside we have nothing else. Sts had half a team out.

That sort of flow was exactly what we used to do to poor teams in the past - they'd hold us for a while then we'd blow them apart.

I do think we could do better with a better coach but the squad is full of average players who are simply not good enough. I've no interest in benchmarking ourselves against hudds or London or a disinterested Catalans - we need to want to be as good as or better than sts.

Agreed, Saints are 16 points clear from any other team with a nearly a 260 points difference advantage, they are playing on a different level to anyone else to in the league

Having said that I think it would be hilarious if they bottled the big games again, some of their fans are getting a bit arrogant

It feels like those on here expecting us to be as good as a team miles ahead of everyone in the league considering the position we've been in this season need a bit of a reality check. We're performing significantly better than we were and for the first 20 mins or so were by far the better team. Competing better with the teams at the top while finishing ahead of the teams in and around us are all we can realistically hope to achieve in our current state. Yes we're miles off the top teams with our full strength squad but we're not going to be near those top teams any time soon. We'll still be in transition next year as well and a comfortable mid-table performance would be a positive improvement. I think some people are getting a bit carried away with the good performances in the last couple of weeks. S'not going to be an overnight fix is it.