4th in the league is a massive improvement in a short space of time with an unproven coach.

Can we now lose the haters

If we continue to defend as well as we did against Hull (I can't really say we defended well against Bradford as they didn't really offer us anything to defend against!), and if we somehow manage to create a Plan B in attack for when Roby is being bashed about by their forwards, I would very much like us to meet Wigan in the knock out game of the playoffs.* This way we will avoid another humiliation/megga disappointment at Old Trafford if we are still unable to beat them but if we are able to beat them then we will be in a good position to win the bloody thing.

*The caveat to this is that should Wigan's form drop through the floor between now and the semi final of the playoffs I retract the statement because another team could be the Big Threat instead!

I did not get to see the game, but to keep any team to nil requires some kind of consistency in concentration, even if it requires no special effort in defence. I've seen in the past very good Saints teams not nil very poor teams just because the game was over by the time we where 20 points ahead. We are currently averaging post Royce 15.2 points against in defense. That's pretty decent. It's something that has really been tightened up, and that includes the shalckings against Wigan.

I enjoyed it. We crushed them up front and our abilty to complete a high % of sets means that in that situation, the opposition don't get a look in. We were also kicking on the front foot which meant we completely dominated territory.

Whilst there wasn't a lot of champagne rugby, if you compare the match to, say, the Wakefield game, we were a lot more expansive. This can be seen by our scoring a number of tries out wide.
It still didn't flow as well as it could, but we did try to move it wide of the ruck more often than usual, making the defence spread and giving Lomax that touch of freedom he needs to get his game going and Roby seemed happy to draw and give more often.
Lance still didn't impress me, his postioning at 2nd receiver seems to make things awkward. He obviously has ability in certain situations, which his try showed, but things don't look slick when he's involved at 5/8th and he often makes the wrong decision of which way to shift play.

Wello went off with 5-10 minutes to go and makinson went to full back certainly showed one nice touch coming into the line and one less than impressive when he gave a bad pass to slow up a move. It did seem like we kind of forced it through him once he'd moved, though.

Young Josh Jones got a hattrick. I reckon if he keeps his head he'll be a saints player for the next 10 years. Whether he'll be a star centre or just a solid shirt filler I don't know, but he'll be good enough for a decnt SL side to rely on, I reckon.
Out going Shenton showed a lovely bit of centre play for Lomax's 2nd try which was complimented by a nice fend from Tommy Mak.

Bradford didn't get much going, but they did have their moments of pressure and we worked hard when we had to in order to keep them out. The Nil part of the scoreline was richly deserved.

It didn't look like a bad pass to me. Shenny just dropped it. The only way it might have been bad which would have been hard to assess would be if it had been too fast but it was back and to the right area of the body so IMO Shenny should have got it.


Fend? You mean he skinned the opposition on the outside?

I think that particular try was one of the best I've seen all season from Saints.

He fended off Jeffries with a hand off.

Watching the game back, there was some poor tackling one on one, which was the same for the Bulls in the Cas game. Carney repeatedly compared the Bulls poor tackling with the Tiger's poor positional defence.