they came a year after they won the league, or had you forgot that?

That's true, they did. My bad. I had forgotten, yes.

But I stand by my other point. Wigan were on the cusp before Maguire came over. Do you not remember us kicking them out of the playoffs at Knowsley Road based on a dubious call from the ref on Longy's try saving tackle over the touchline? Another ref would have called it a second effort. They were far from rubbish when Maguire came over. Maguire just did for Wigan what Anderson did for us. He tightened them up in defence and gave them set pieces which they executed well, over and over and over again.

And IMO thats all we're missing at the moment

sorry are we talking about the saints style of rugby, we have just lost our way some what

Defence? Our defence was fine against Hull and Bradford. Take a look at the final scores for confirmation of that (and bear in mind that most of the points conceded were conceded by Foster, so that's one player's errors).

Our attack came together last season after our defence so there was no reason to believe that wouldn't happen again this season. Our errors and lack of discipline kept killing us in that respect. And our lack of on-field leadership - nobody willing to take up the mantel from the now absent Jammer.

Yes, since Smith is Warrington's coach.

I'm sorry but we do not have the players to replicate Warrington's style of rugby, regardless of who is coaching.

I disagree, our defence is poor, it's been poor all year. Fair enough we've tightened it up in last two weeks but we are still missing tackles, we can't defend our line when under pressure and we've looked all at sea.

Yeah, sure, that's why we conceded 30 plus points against Hull and Bradford.

I agree really. Our goalline defence this season has been pretty poor. Everytime a team gets within 20m of our tryline the nerves set in.

Our defence has been crap!

Even the bulls cut us up at times and they had 10 players out injured and their main attacking player sammut out suspended.

I'd we defend like we did last week or they way we did against hull then I predict Wigan and Warrington would put 40+ on us.

The defence is all at sea, massive overlaps and our goal line defence has been as bad as I've seen since I started watching saints.

Whenever I hear the name "Alex Murphy" I never think of the player widely regarded as the greatest of all time in either code who spearheaded the rise of my club from utter mediocrity to becoming the greatest club in the game. I instead can only ever think of the beleaguered failure sitting on the sidelines shouting ineffectually at his team as they were overwhelmed and babbling semi-coherently in post-match interviews about it all. Please let this not ever happen to KC too...

Did you watch Saints under Millward? Presumably not!

Clearly you didn't watch the Hull and Bradford games either. Our defence was much improved.

Bradford's missing players are worse than the ones they had on the pitch against us (bar Sammut). They could do with their missing players remaining absent for the rest of the season. They may get somewhere then.

As for Wigan and Warrington (and Leeds) they are simply better teams than we are. Well, Warrington and Leeds are anyway. It wouldn't matter how good our defence was, they have the players and the experience to undermine it. Particularly if Meli is on the wing on Sunday. Christmas again for Sinfield!

Exactly. I do hope McManus realises just what pressure he has heaped upon his home boys and what failure might do to at least one of them.

Do you think Mr. Teflon will accept any responsibility?