Quote: SaintsFan "I think you are confusing style of play with level of performance. I was talking about style of play, responding to the point about playing 'the Saints way'. But we were as conservative against Widnes as we were against Bradford and Hull, for example. The big difference is that certain players have started making an effort going forward (attitude) and the individual errors have dropped. As you identified, the greatest sources of those indivdual errors were Gaskell and Foster and they have been dropped (something I too was suggesting over a month ago so as to get their confidence/form back).
I wonder if anyone ever considered that we actually need to play conservatively because the team is not capable of playing otherwise?
Well, as I've said before, I wasn't of the view that the team would have stayed the way it was with Royce in charge because we turned around last year and on that evidence there was no reason to believe we wouldn't have turned around this year, especially since our losses were so very close (and in the last two, with Robes and others out injured). However, what I would rather have is an experienced coach in charge and unlike some people I don't rate our current set up solely based upon the fact that they've been at the club for ages. That doesn't make them good first team coaches. I think though that McManus was banking on the fans being appeased in the way that many have been appeased because he would have known that he couldn't have pulled off what he did without choosing exactly those two people to be in charge.
However, I just view them in the same way I would any other coaching team and so far as I can see, bar the individual errors, we haven't changed as a team. We still have the same frailties, as last week showed. We still play to the same style.'"
No i'm not confusing anything. We're doing lots of things differently now and players are given different direction under the current coaches, I know that for a fact too so it's unfortunately not something thats open for debate.
With regards to your experience issue, anybody who isn't so obsessed with Royce Simmons would be able to tell you that experience in the team has been key, the thing with Swift in particular is it's easier to bring youth into a team that isn't under the cosh in the same way we'd been. It needed some experience to steady the ship, that did the job and now we're in a far better position that we were under Simmons.
