Quote St pete="St pete"I personally don't think O'Brian is good enough. I've not seen a saints scrumhalf drop the ball of pass to the ground like he did tonight.
I'd be very reluctant to keep him to be honest.'"
I'd keep him until the end of the season but we shouldn't be signing him permanently. I deliberately avoided the O'Brien thread because I had my doubts based on the Huddersfield & Bradford games when he made a few errors but tonight confirmed what I thought that he isn't really good enough for a permanent deal.
As for Saints tonight, it was the most clueless and heartless display of the season. We were poor against Huddersfield but they were red hot that day and we were dreadful against Widnes but we had 10 out. Tonight we were full strength, we have no excuse whatsoever for that shower of a showing. Another disgraceful home performance. Having a season ticket is the equivalent of burning money.
The forwards were dreadful from minute one. I cannot believe Laffranchi is getting a new deal, he is absolutely woeful, he offers no impact. Puletua isn't the same player he was a few years ago, he's lazy and looks like a player that is ready to retire. LMS is the most frustrating forward I've seen in years, he is a penalty machine and it's usually a stupid penalty when we're working our way back into the game that he gives away. Walmsley is the one prop who makes yards for us and tackles hard but at the moment his fitness isn't great. He was lagging a few times and teams start targetting him in defence. He has great potentisal and has had a great season but he's still a young kid learning the game. We badly miss Soliola's graft and aggression in the pack. I posted that he'd be a huge miss for us and it proved that way tonight, He's an irreplaceable player in our team right now.
The lack of attacking ideas was really worrying. Hull KR are 7th, they're not s top team, yet we didn't really know how to break them down. Apart from one good pass from Lomax (for Meli's try) we never really challenged the Hull KR defensive line. Hopefully Walsh can help remedy this next season but he will need a stand off to partner him, we cannot persist with Wellens in that position and Wheeler as we know is unrealiable.
The lack of direction, passion and heart was probably the most worrying aspect tonight. There was not one player in the team driving us forward. It was 17 individuals trying to do a job with no real direction. Since Graham left we haven't had anyone to do it and it was massively in evidence tonight, summed up by the lack of urgency to form a scrum.
I think unless our recruitment and retention approach changes dramtically in the next few years we'll remain trophyless. Myself and DD from redvee discussed how many more years it would be before we won a trophy. He reckoned another 5 to make it 10 without a trophy... it's difficult to argue especislly when players like Wellens, Gardner and Laffranchi are supposedly "earning" new contracts.