Anyone who believes Simmons wasn't the issue is delusional at best. If Royce was still in charge, we'd have never played like that, no.way on earth. We'd have had Lomax and Gaskell in the halves, Makinson on the wing, Meli in the centres, Wheeler in the 20s, TP at prop, Wilkin at Second Row, Clough at Loose, and the final piece - Hohaia on the bench, with no size in the other three subs.

I don't think kc and rush have coached the team to play that way, I just think they've removed the over cautious tactics of Simmons. I don't think we'd see so many offloads all year as tonight, and not once the "lomax, gaskell, wellens" move, which was so obvious, and desperately showed wello's pace up!

Somebody said our only tactic of five drives and see how far gaskell can hoof it was all we had.

Anyone criticising the decisions to remove Royce has gone strangely quiet. One swallow doesn't make a summer, but I'm 100% sure, we'd have never played like that tonight under Simmons

Dont you know by now that there is, and always will be, a section of spectators who watch Saints, who need to have a scapegoat ....Meli fits the bill and before him it was Gardner.....and so it goes forward. Stats show that the lad wasnt as bad as is painted but to the few, wooden head wooden leg comes to mind.
You can talk to a man with a wooden leg all day but a wooden head,mmmm ( just to clarify, I am not advocating the purchase of a lump hammer ..... but )

I think Meli has suffered by leaving his howlers for the most high profile of games.

If he had done that at a CC cup draw at Barrow away then no-one would even have noticed it.

Sadly when the game boils down to 80 minutes at the end of the year, any mistakes in the GF are amplified as at that point the other 20+ rounds count for next to nothing due to the set up of the league.

Do you remeber the try he scored against Leeds in the CC semi at huddersfield? He scored from our own 20, I think from a tap restart. Magic.

The game at Widnes against Wire last year typified the way these clueless fools think - Meli was our best player on the night by a mile, tackling and working like a demon, stopping a certain goalline try and generally being the only Saints player to take the fight to them in any remote way, shape or form. And yet, because he made one bad pass the whole night and ran the ball into touch once he was practically run out of town and blamed for costing us the game single-handedly on the wretched "other site"'s forums the day after. You can see them at games practically coiled waiting for every single mistake that their designated scapegoat is going to make and pouncing on every single one with vitriolic glee, conveniently ignoring all the good stuff on the way... I bet they're all grooming Foster as his long term replacement even as we speak.