Saints had a bad ref? Quelle Suprise

Having just watched the match back (I must be mad) I think you'll find we had no ball and no territory.

It was something like 39% of ball we had.

We had enough. But we still coughed it up when we were in striking range

I don't think 39% is enough and the territory stat ( I can't remember) was heavily in Leeds favour also.

Having watched it back, we were absolutely slaughtered. They made 50-60 metres per set consistently and when they didn't their kicking was either superb or hoofed dead, where we were kicking from inside our 40 more often than not. We never really escaped from that bar the couple of penalties before the Jones try. Leeds made easy metres, completed sets and had the composure to exploit our failures to number up defensively.

What really disappointed me was the execution on the few occasions we did get sets in Leeds's 20. We consistently wasted three tackles with really lazy passes to the first man and never had the patience to apply any pressure.

Today was as bad as it comes performance wise. We were never in the game.

From minute one to minute eighty we wasn't in it. Agreed!

I've only seen it on TV and my opinion is that we got a few bad calls from the ref which if they'd gone our way would have kept us in it. But, and it's a big but, leeds were much better than us in all departments. They looked like a team for a start, and a team that really wanted to win. We looked disjointed, very poor line speed again, poor kicking and last tackle plays again.

I don't know where this idea of saints to win everything came from, presumably because we were top of the league after the first few games, but personally I think we've only played well twice, against leeds and against wire. Now we look like we could be missing two of our most influential players again for a while.

Spot on Saddened. People can try and blame Silverwood as much as they like but the truth is Leeds were much, much better and if the ref had given Saints everything, they would still have lost.

Still think our defence is the bees knees?

I don't blame the ref one bit.

Leeds was better on the day, they are better team than us. Simple as that.

I'm interested to see what you thought of the spear tackle on Greenwood. I'm suprised it hasn't been mentioned. I thought it was a pretty bad one. Delaney seemed lift and to drive him into the floor. It was fortunate Greenwood managed to twist and land arm/shoulder first.

No where near as bad as the Ferres incident, and that blunts any reaction. I think it was careless, reckless at worst, but I don't think Delany was ever fully in control of the tackle, so any card would of been incredibly harsh. I'll wait and see if it gets reviewed by the disciplinary - but what they do week on week is a lottery at best!

It was bad as in it went wrong, but he did the right thing and controlled it and pulled back from a spear.

That's the key difference. If you are going to lift, you have to be in control and use that control, if it goes further than you expected for any reason, then you have to pull back, hold it, basically the tackler has a duty of care and for me. As soon as it went above horizontal Deleny recognized the issue and made it safer. And took the penalty for it.

This is the thing with a lift (I've noticed Walsh likes to lift tackle too). It's effective as it makes sure the player goes down, but it does have a risk. As does a big tackle on the shoulders. If timing or positioning is out it's up to the tackler to adjust.

I'd expect a warning letter over tackling technique

Fair play. Looked worse than that to me though

Agreed