Quote: batman84 "Cant remember why i was their but i was their for when henrey paul made his debut, came on got the ball chiped it caught it ran in to score...great try'"
That was one of my most embarrassing moments as a Saints fan. We were, unsurprisingly, under the stewardship of Eric Hughes and Wigoon dropped out to about 40m+ and the players just stood around waiting for somebody to pick up the ball. Henry Paul raced from the goal line drop out and picked up the ball, untouched, to race the rest of the way for a try. Hideously embarrassing and one of the iconic moments of Eric Hughes' reign.
People keep talking about how Hughes built up the side to take Super League I and that's a load of crap. He was backed by the board to bring players in, however he was tactically inept. The drop out was typical of Saints slack attitude under Hughes. Defensively we dropped off the pace to become as weak as we were in the final Murphy days. You could tell the difference between Hughes and McClennan. Under the latter, whenever there was a situation like a restart or penalty you could guarantee that the players would be alert to what's going on i.e. if there was a kick for goal the players would line up in a proper formation prepared for incidents like the ball bouncing off the posts. We never had that under Hughes and the drop out was one of the nails in the coffin for Hughes. We lacked a professional approach which McRae addressed in Super League I and got the best out the players, particularly in defence.
