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.

I'm not expecting us to be better than sts now. I'm expecting us to want to be at that level, and heaven forbid have a plan to get there.

If sts can get to that standard there's no reason any of the other sides capable of paying the full cap can't as well.

Pre-cup final game for saints and what do we do? Come up with a rather pedestrian offload game while shirking the more physical side. 99% certain there'd have been a saints player or two keen to take themselves out of the firing line had we been tougher and even if not, Holbrook might well have taken that decision.
Now, I don't know if the game plan was Agar's or the players'. If it was the former, I'd prefer a different coach for next year; the latter and I'd prefer a different captain. Last night was as close as we'll come to a big game for the foreseeable. B0ll0cks to being good in the first half, overall we were woeful.

You don’t think the club want to be at that level and they don’t have a plan? Of course they do but what some people seem to be missing is it will take time, sport is circular weve had a long period of great success and in time we will again

Totally agree with this. We can't expect to win every game, all of the time. Although Saints were depleted, we're an out of form, struggling team. The cyclical nature of professional sport unfortunately means we've now got to wait for our next period of success.

Agree with that as we should have played Oledzki and not had Sutcliffe/Donaldson together on the bench.
Playing a touch and pass sevens style rugby played right in to their hands.

ST's didnt get out of 2nd gear & dismantled us in 20 2nd half minutes.
They had 7 players missing who would walk into ANY SL teams starting 17.
Last night was a reality check irrespective of their pts diff wins or form.
Coaches Players & intergrating our best jnrs are still way off where it NEEDS TO BUT ALSO SHOULD BE.
This Club has been mismanaged & taken too much for granted for the last 2 years at 1st Team level & it shouldnt have been the warnings were all there.
Yes success may well be cyclical but challenging shouldnt be nor should the drop in standards be so huge either.

The most galling thing about this game is that a Championship club not so long ago devised better tactics than us, against a full strength Saints team. You'd have thought that putting a similar game plan into effect with our better players (no disrespect to Scott Murrell and colleagues) could have had a decent chance of turning them over... Much better than the low percentage touch and pass rubbish that was served up on the day.

I'm a Saints fan, for what its worth I thought Leeds were competative in the first half, Saints hit a purple patch in the first 20 minutes of the 2nd half and you never really recovered from that. I am not one who wants to see Leeds relegated, as our sport cannot afford to lose a team like yourselves. After our Cunningham experience in which we were truly awful and I had stopped watching, we got a new Coach, the current Saints team is largely the same one that was available to Cunningham.
On a side note I was impressed by your teams sportsmanship, re the Guard of Honour and the way you played the game, fast open Rugby without resorting to grubby play.

You have a good point about high standards and ambition. For too long the club has gone with the “trier with potential” model and expected the player to magically transform in our wonderful environment into a swan.

Sometimes that works but more often than not it doesn’t. Other top clubs also have good staff and facilities. The NRL clubs we sign players from have better.

In any case, it is clear that we lack top quality players. I think we aren’t far off being competitive again now; but to win silverware we need the academy prospects to mature over a number of years.

Bit of an arrogant statement that about the benchmark. That is why supporters of other clubs dislike the Rhinos, thinking they are far superior to most clubs.