Found myself numb after half an hour tonight. Not because of the biting cold wind, more because of the standard of fare on offer on the field.

Tonight was possibly the most bored I've been at a rugby league game, bar the odd pre-season friendly I got dragged to. There was absolutely no intensity in that game at all, it's nights like tonight that show the massive gulf between NRL and SL. No intensity, no real commitment, just a load of people going through the motions. The game was littered with errors and refereed by another simply incompetent official, who's fear of blowing the whistle led to it being very, very messy at the PTB. Langtree Park is a very soulless place on a cold night like that, there really is no atmosphere at all.

With Walsh, Amor and Walmsley on the field we look pretty much unbeatable, although I'm conscious we've not been tested yet, Warrington were very underdone when we played them.

With them off the field in the second half we looked completely and utterly clueless, as bad as last season.

Shining lights tonight? Makinson had a good game, good to see him back himself and have a proper gallop for one of his tries. The usual suspects in the pack did okay, Roby, Wilkin, Amor and Walmsley. LMS deserves credit as well for his efforts. Masoe did some big minutes in the second half and seemed to be growing into it. He'll be fine for us once he's shed the spare timber. Wello did okay, a couple of decent passes out wide, but no impact in attack or defense. Relieved he had the class to avoid any nonsense, it seemed like there were a few calling for him to go for the 2 when we got the penalty under the sticks.

give over. It wasn't pretty but it wasn't like some of the rubbish we've sen in the last 3 yrs, let alone the millward era of throwing games, let alone pre 96

It's okay, the last time saddened was complaining about being bored was 2006, it's actually a compliment to the team

And only a line on wellens??? I expected at least 4 paragraphs laying into every step he took!

Nearly every home game last year was worse than that tonight. I must admit I was bored stiff again tonight but that's nothing new at Langtree.

It was shocking, you could tell the majority of the players just simply didn't want to be there. Anyone who didn't attend, just get a thesaurus and look up the word dour. Then look at the words for 80 minutes. Boring!

Usual hyperbole. It was a middle of the road game. We dominated for 30 minutes almost unopposed.

Then the ref stepped in, 3 penalties on the bounce a nice easy try for the ref and we started to go a bit to sleep.

But then for most of the next 40 we operated with one sub. Of course Saddened would have us burning up the pitch flicking all opposition aside, but the fact we were operating with one sub and no halfback meant we had forwards doing longer stints and no direction of play.

But then at least it gave Sad End something to moan about

With Walsh off the field I was reminded of the fare we served up last season and that was depressing. Hull KR at home last year was by far the worse game I've seen Saints play, in my limited years as a fan, and tonight's game came nowhere near that but after losing three strike threats which also included our general, we did have the 2013 look about us again.

But at least we won, which given the disruption was a bonus.

With regards the not being tested bit, if you break the league up into a mini league of the top 5 and the rest, this is how it currently looks:

Team W. D. L. PD. Points.
Leeds. 1. 1. 0. +6. 3
Huddersfield. 1. 1. 0. +16. 3
Saints. 1. 0. 0. +30 2
Wigan. 0. 0. 1. -16. 0
Warrington. 0. 0. 2. -36. 0

Doesn't matter when you play them, but winning this league is the key to success, and we've done as well as anyone so far! We've not had much of these battles yet

A team containing Nathan Ashe beat Leeds around this time last year (a few more games in I think) - I wouldn't read anything into it! How we fare against Leeds will be a good yardstick, but by no means confirmation one way or t'other. It will be interesting to see how the top 5 mini table develops over the year though.

We can only beat what's put in front of us, and that's what we did tonight, all be it, doing it tough. Lick our wounds, rest anyone whose struggled to get through tonight and focus on maintaining our best start in a good few seasons!

I'd agree with that. Leeds will be the real test

For last night I think you have got to factor in the following that you can,t ignore.

Catalans came here to compete with a spoiling game, continuous off side to control the ruck area and messing around at the play the ball to slow it right down.
The performance of George Stokes was a 2 out of 10 some baffling decisions and incapable of letting the game flow, at one time the penalties against us appeared corrupt.
The dissruption of the team with injuries that eventually took us to last seasons offerings.
With the above negated we should have really seen a score line of something in the region of 48 - 12.

I agree , i was saying on the way home that for 30mins we were good no penalties then Stokes suddenly decided we were infringing almost every PTB , depite the number of flops people taken off the ball and offsides that Cats did es we won, but as Judderman says you got the feeling he was trying everything to keep Cats in the game at some points in the game the ONLY way that Cats could get up the field was Penalties, not surprised he got heckled at the end
A halfway decent ref would have kept the game flowing and penalised BOTH sides equally

He got heckled at the end because Jones grounded the ball but he disallowed the try.

The game was terrible but we ground out a win. The more worrying bit is the worst has happened , we went into the season with 1 senior halfback and he's now injured. Without Walsh we looked back to last years directonless rubbish but were saved by the fact our pack is no longer powder puff and Catalan were terrible.