In relation to the original thread title, if I'd been offered two wins from the next three games after the Bulls game, I'd have snatched your hand off. Add to this the style of rugby played in those two games, in relation to the dross that we've watched for 3+ seasons prior, and I'd certainly take it.

Wigan were better than us today. It happens. The way to respond is to go to their place and turn them over.

It was what struck me as i looked at the team lineups... If we could hold the forwards, we were better in the backs... That said, i thought you had the stronger looking pack and bench, on paper.

Good job we don't play on paper!!

Blinkers? I was being pragmatic. If you think Richards IS "electric"; Charnley IS "world class"; Carmont ISN'T past his best; and Goulding IS better than the majority of SL centres, then by all means you be at peace with your beliefs.

Anyway, there are many reasons why a player can appear to make so many clean breaks - sometimes it's the quality of the individual and their ability to beat a player with skill & pace (Tomkins, for example), whilst other times it's the quality of the player(s) inside them (I'd like to see how many clean breaks Ade Gardener made with Lyon as his centre...).

wi*an play a game where their attack involves a lot of ball to the outside backs, with plenty of dummy-running and very good angles. This is always going to create breaks by the three-quarters. It doesn't mean those three-quarters are modern rugby superstars.

The best team won, get used to it.

What an enlightening post, particularly as this thread is full of people claiming that Saints were actually the best side.

Well done.

Come off it. The way you paint this comparison anyone might think we haven't moved the ball toward the backs in years. This is patently absurd. Irrespective of whether you think Saints have played conservatively over the last two or three seasons the fact remains there have been plenty of occasions when we have opened up - runners, angles and all. And yet time after time we have found it enormously difficult to score tries from outside the 40m mark. So much so I almost fell off my chair when Meli scored that 70 yarder the other week.

Wigan, on the other hand, seem to score long-distance tries with great regularity. Yes, many of them are down to clever tactics, good distribution etc. But many others are purely down to pace, acceleration, elusiveness and guile. Words which are rarely used in the company of Meli, Gardner, Shenton & Wellens.

Is this a "world beating" Wigan back line? Aside from Tomkins - no. But then it doesn't need to be in order to beat ours.

I wasn't aware I'd made a comparison to Saints' players in the post you've quoted (which was in response to some pie wittering about my appraisal of the wi*an three-quarters).

I've already said I don't rate Meli/Gardner/Shenton and absolutely agree our backline lacks pace. Maybe that lack of pace has dictated our conservative gameplan, I don't know. But I do know that most of the time over the last 3 or so years that we've moved the ball out wide, it's been not so much pedestrian in terms of leg speed, but in terms of speed of ball - something amplified (very visibly) by the fact we've lacked dummy runners/not drawn defenders in before passing/just passed the ball along the line seemingly for the sake of it.

But then contrast that to some of the plays in the Leeds & Wire games - we looked fast (both of leg and of ball!) and tore some mean defences to shreds (albeit from 20-40m out, I grant you).

We do ideally need more pace in the side, I've not said we don't. But my point is that for the past 3 seasons, we've not deployed tactics and gameplays that have made the most of the players we have.

We did play well against Warrington & Leeds. But let's also not forget that both Leeds & Warrington offered up some pretty mediocre defence, the former for most of the match whilst the latter at least half of it. Wigan's defence was watertight for 80 minutes. No limp arm grabs. No blown marker defence patterns. No dummies taken. Which meant the only way we were going to score was through a) weight of pressure, which haven't the kicking game to generate, and/or b) - class, which we lack in the backs and even if we did possess such we haven't the playmaker(s) to use.



And yet we've consistently been there or thereabouts so our tactics can't be THAT far out. Given our paucity of genuine talent in the backs if anything I'd say we've overachieved these last two or three seasons. Indeed, my guess is in ten or twenty years fans will look back at today's squad and marvel at just how close we did get with what is - in relative terms - a pretty mediocre set of Saints backs.

Saints form of the past 2 weeks was the best thing that could have happened for Wigan as like you say it made us sit up and take note. Add in the injuries in the forwards we had taking off some pressure and expectation and our mindset was spot on for the game.

Given that even before the Bulls game I thought we'd lose all three I have to be happy with taking two of them, particularly the one at the HJ and future champs, Wire. Backing up three weeks in a row against the three other best teams in the comp was always going to be difficult so I can't complain.

Yesterday was more like what we've played like over the past year and a bit so I'm not expecting too much from the remainder of the season now. Bit surprised that we weren't able to counter Wane's Millward-esque tactics of attacking the space behind the defensive dummy half, getting quick PTBs and scoots before flinging it out wide. We appeared to forget how to slow them down or alternatively they were just better at not getting tackled properly (which I think is more likely).

Well well....there's a shock, stains fans thinking they were the best team in a game they were absolutely battered in, wonders will never cease.

Well there you go,

I've definately come to the opinion that some people aint happy unless we lose. That then justifies their position of where they think we are. It was one game, it's no truer reflection of our form than the previous 2 games.

This forum just reads like from some people that they have been holding their fire for 2 weeks hoping for a lose they can churn out how poor we are. Like I said if we hit some good form over the next 4 games then this loss whilst painful will be seen as a blip, if our form continues to be poor from here on in then the previous 2 weeks will be seen as a blip.


Over the 3 week period of the new set up we have 2 from 3 in games against opposition above us in the league.

Which was some what better than 2 wins from 7 games.
But if we give them another 4 games then we can start to compare form properly rather than just peddling our own game to game theory's.

We are 3 games off the top fourr. 8th place in the league. We have work to do for sure, but it's well within our ability to get back into this fight.

Read it.......

Understood it......

I'm right......

You're not.......