Lilley would bring much thats currently not there

We should have won the game in the first half but looked cluelss. Defence was decent enough and effort was there but that won't be enough season long.

I would have taken a close defeat against saints before hand but that Saints was very poor by their standards and were there for the taking.I think we saw 2 mediocre teams tonight which won't be in the mix come the end of the season.

Saints Edge Past the Rhinos in Season Opener Super League 2017 touched down at the 'Totally Wicked Stadium' as St. Helens welcomed the Leeds Rhinos for the seasons opening fixture. Both sides were looking to get their campaign off to the best of starts with an opening weekend win, one would be disappointed in eighty minutes time. Saints were without new signing Matty Smith, out with a nasty pre-season injury, and the Rhinos had lost Brett Ferres, Danny McGuire and Brett Delaney to friendly game knocks. But both sides gave debuts to new signings. READ MORE ON THIS STORY...

Saints Edge Past the Rhinos in Season Opener Super League 2017 touched down at the 'Totally Wicked Stadium' as St. Helens welcomed the Leeds Rhinos for the seasons opening fixture. Both sides were looking to get their campaign off to the best of starts with an opening weekend win, one would be disappointed in eighty minutes time. Saints were without new signing Matty Smith, out with a nasty pre-season injury, and the Rhinos had lost Brett Ferres, Danny McGuire and Brett Delaney to friendly game knocks. But both sides gave debuts to new signings. READ MORE ON THIS STORY...

Impressed with effort but our attack was woeful only looked dangerous when watkins received good early ball. The sleeve had better have another trip to Oz and find a half back to go with the xmas parcel.MoM golding by a mile

Kieran Cunningham - 'that was a classic!'

Pleeeease!

Sutcliffe is looking poorer and poorer every play he stifeled. Moon would be better at 6

Some things were better. Most individuals were decent, plus the middle defence (there was a hooker there, who knew?). The hakfbacks and the kicking game were hopeless...lost us the game in the first half and didn't improve in the second. Burrow at least made a couple of correct decisions but can't remember Sutcliffe making any, he will never, ever be a stand-off. Even aside from the set management and kick execution the only time we looked like we had a threat at half was in the two minutes Moon moved there when Parcell was off.

Fucking clueless in attack. I don't buy McD's excuse about testing the defense's honesty when we get caught in possession on the last. It's just dumb football. Get some actual halves and we might be a decent team again.

Need to get him back frim Bradford and send Sutty there. He'd have probably kicked the goal as well...you knew Sutcliffe was going to miss. It's also why we didn't takeke any normally kickable penalties, because it's odds on you don't get points from them.

Another worry is the poor quality on display from both teams.hope this is not the standard being set for the season,the creativity seems to be a thing of the past in super duper league

I quite enjoyed that, but it could just be down to not having watched any rugby for ages.

Starting with the positives. Golding was outstanding albeit a little heart in mouth when crabbing across the line sometimes.

All the outside backs looked good, and it was nice to see Watkins really look to get involved.

The pack fronted up. Garbutt, Ablett and Cuthbo all looked a lot fitter and in Abletts case more interested than at any point last year. Garbutt was probably the best prop on the pitch. Singo matched him but imo loses marks for a couple of really daft, late tackle count penalties. Ward added something different to the back row but I felt in general it lacked punch. Parcell is at least as good as advertised.

Now Sutty and Burrow, as a set of halves, have to do more with the amount of ball they were given, even if saints defence was pretty good. I acctually thought their long kicking game was not terrible, but when we got into the 20 we really struggled ball in hand. I think we tried a couple of the right sort of kicks early on, but didn't execute, concede the 7 tackle set then went away from it far too quickly.

Oh and Baldwinson did ok, when he got on. IMO was better or at least as good as Mullaly and showed he could mix it with the big boys, hopefully hes earned more game time.

Sutcliffe would thrive better at 13. Thought ward went really well when he was on though

This is the bottom line from the game. I find it quite hard to talk it up as a spectacle at all.Its the first game so we will see but if you compare that Saints Leeds game to a Saints Leeds of 5-10 years ago you are talking a league of difference in quality on show.

I would by the honesty thing, if we at least kicked the ball some of the time on the last tackle, I thought that was the whole point of running it, to catch teams out.

Why only use one of your subs for the last 5 minutes of the game? And did Mullally play any of the second half?