The first job should be buying Hohaia a one way ticket home and replacing him with an organiser at 6. Following that we need to teach lomax that running to the line, feigning a pass before releasing a short ball is decent SOME of the time but when it is literally his only move, we are going to get found out.

Then we need to recreate Paul Anderson and we'll have achieved a winning team.

In order of what we need next year I would say it is

Organising half back
Huge prop
Full Back
Wing
Centre

We're fine at back row and hooker but all of the other positions need to be improved upon if we are to regain our place in the top 4 because we are comfortably behind Wigan, Wire, Hudds and Leeds at the moment and I'd only fancy us against Catalans in a home game.

Your next 3 games could be cruical to you finishing in the top 4.
Monday, 21 May 2012
Leeds v St Helens, 20Sunday, 27 May 2012
St Helens v Wigan, 18Friday, 1 June 2012
Hull v St Helens, 15:00

For your season to remain on track I think you will need to win 2 of those 3. Lose 2 of them or even worse 3 then you could well be in 8th place. But looking at your fixtures after these 3 you play some winnable games.

Rubbish. Makinson worked just as hard and made the only other clean break (nobody was following up of course). Wello also knocked on and allowed Finch - probably the slowest man on the Wigan team - to leave him for dust. So while I'm not into bagging Wello - he was great last season and since returning from injury this season has been great too - he is not impervious to error. The fact is that his lack of pace does now hinder our attack. However, on Saturday that was not our problem. We didn't have pace in our attack in the first place. In fact, we didn't have anything in attack.

On Saturday Wello and Makinson were our best players. The majority of the remainder were a very mixed bag and some should not have been played at all. However, those 'some' will be played against Leeds and in all our games regardless of how poorly they perform because they are senior players and these days it would seem they are beyond reproach.

I was going to include this in my post. But there is a difference in that the players had gotten rid of a Coach they did not like and felt they had to put up a show to justify their actions.

But now the honeymoons over and KC & Rush's inexperience as Coach's will be tested.

Obviously the loss of Graham, the best prop in SL if not the world has left a massive hole, but the main problem for me is the recruitment. Hohia, Lanfranchi and Perry for me are very disappointing. I always liked Mark Flanagan at Wigan and thought he would go well for you, but he too doesn't to seem to have improved since his time in the NRL.

Both teams were poor in a poor game on Sat, but like it or not, we are the much better unit at present.

I agree with that. Saints have been prone of late to waiting too long to replace senior players. Wello has been a fantastic servant and an outstanding player but I think we need to make changes.

Maybe, but he did that into the first tackler and stopped there.



I like this, you are praising him with a criticism. He is the captain, so if the performance is horrible and spineless he's got a big part to play in that. He's the worst choice of a captain ever. He's so negative and bitter, spending half his time on the field flapping his arms at the referees and having tantrums.



Do you not think there is a problem in that we never win those big, pressure games anymore?

Laffranchi has been our best forward this season (behind Robes, obviously) and is a very good player. He isn't our problem. Flanagan also has been a good player, especially in defence. Again, he is not our problem. Hohaia has been a disappointment and I am now of the view that he isn't halfback material. He should be dropped from that position and Gaskell reintroduced (with proper support from the coaching staff) to see if he can regain his form of last year. Meli shouldn't play again and Perry should be advised to look for another club. Given that we are now out of the Cup and young players helped to get us to the GF last year, we should go with our young players again and see if they can inject some enthusiasm back into the team. They might also get some of the senior players worried enough to prompt them into working hard for a full 80 minutes, something a few of them have consistently failed to do all season.

You do know that there are 16 other players that contribute to a poor team performance, and it isn't all Wellens' fault? For what it's worth I agree that he's part of the problem that we lack leadership, but ultimately no one else is stepping up either, so how can you hold him fully accountable? Who would you make captain, out of interest?



Except we do, we beat Wigan in two high-pressure playoff games last year to make the Grand Final and Wellens was instrumental in both. Or are you just griping that we haven't won the Grand Final since 2006 and the collective burden on the 30 or 40 players who've represented us in this combined games somehow should come down on Wellens' back?

All I said was that he was one of our better players at the weekend (not difficult) and I still have faith in him to be in the squad next year.

The problem you have stretches back a few years.

Your team are getting old and you've done nothing about it, apart from signing old Aussies.

Last season you looked great. Lomax and Gaskell were on fire, so what do you do? Drop Gaskell (the better of the two players!), bring Lance Hohaia into your side and play him out of position. Stupid.

Wellens is too old and slow for playing full back now. He'd be better off in the centres to tighten up the defence. Yes, I know Brett Finch walked past him on Saturday, but that was more to do with his lack of pace than technique. In a proper defensive line, I'm sure he would be as solid as anyone.

There are many other things wrong, but a good start would be to put Hohaia at full back, where he belongs (or even better, on a plane back to New Zealand), put Wellens in the centres and bring Lee Gaskell back.

Now, whilst I love it when Wigan give Saints a damn good tonking or ten, I still want to see a competitive Saints side in Super League, so you can take me seriously when I say I do hope you sort yourselves out.

I would agree with that. Wellens didn't have a great game, but you cannot knock his effort. Same with Makinson.

Again, I'm completely baffled by the TV pundits' bagging of our pack. I thought it performed pretty well. Indeed, in the first twenty minutes (when Roby was getting enough go-forward to spring him from the dummy half) I thought it was outstanding. Sure, Perry looks like he could do with losing an extra six pounds or so - but even so, he wasn't THAT bad. The problem for me - which has been the problem all season - is no matter how hard the pack works there is NOTHING outside to capitalize on its efforts. It must be infuriating being a Saints forward right now - here they are doing all the hard graft, providing the platform for our backs to provide the cutting edge and whenever the ball moves twelve feet either side of the posts it stops dead (or worse).

Even if we had any decent backs there is no play-making scrum half to give them the ball! Worse still, we can't keep opponents off us because we don't have any kicking game to speak of. If ever there was a recipe for catastrophe this is it.

In retrospect it was a mistake to jettison some of the youngsters in favour of bringing back Wheeler and Wilkin. Neither was anywhere near effective with the former being something of a liability. I guess it's the kind of error you expect from a new coach - trusting to experience over youth in big matches. But both Rush & Keiron are going to have to learn quickly if we are to salvage anything from this season.

Priority #1 - Bring back Gaskell. He might be undercooked in terms of physique - but he's the only halfback we have with a kicking game who can also organise the attack. Gaskell is our future and the sooner we begin to mould the team around his talents the sooner we're likely to dig ourselves out of this mess.

Swift, Jones & Makinson must also be fast-tracked into regular first team action. Makinson is ready now whilst Jones' freakish physique should allow him to stand up to SL punishment. Swift is the biggest risk because his body isn't quite there yet - but if it's a choice between the standard sub-standard tripe served up by Meli & Gardner and taking a chance on a rookie I'll take the latter every time.

But by far the toughest decision is Wellens. Both Rush & Cunningham have a long history with Wello. I imagine they are good friends. Which will make the job of moving him out of full-back all that harder. I suspect they won't have the stones to make that call. But they have to.