Well, they've lost Sinfield, Peacock, Aiton, possibly JJB as well for next season...2 of them are greats of the game. Aiton is a cracking little hooker and JJB has been a top servant for them.

It'll be interesting to see how they get on next season.

You missed off Leuleuai too.

He doesn,t look as though he can make any impact in a tackle and easily gets wrong footed, taking high balls and support play is excellent but defence is the worse I,ve seen in a saints full back shirt.

Forgot about him. He's been excellent for them and another big loss.

But Long could run. Were you happy with Burns 11 metres with the ball on Friday?

btw Walsh ran for 54 metres.

Just been watching the game again and actually it was a better game than it seemed on the night.

I never got to watch it on TV, but when you do, you can see how hard Leeds are pounding the Saints line with both possession and territory. But we didn't crack as badly as we could have, both tries where team errors, I think Moon for the first try ran past 7 Saints players, so pinning it on Walsh is just wrong, someone should have tackled Moon far earlier.

The same for Burrows break we had started to turn the game and then in Leeds half we had a moment of Laziness and let him run across 3 players.

Leeds were very good no doubt, but we were good also, just not good enough. But it is not an insurmountable gap.
That does not mean I think we will win the next meeting, but talk of not beating Leeds this year is very premature.

We had chances in that first half that we bombed.
2 drops by LMS on the line
Greenwood dropping the ball
forward pass by walsh to Quinlan

We could have done better.

Exactly....it was a cracking game that Saints could have easily won. Lesser teams would have crumbled under that immense Leeds whirlwind start. The fact is you were only 12-4 down at HT with a superbly created try of your own at the end of a huge effort in defence.
Maybe Leeds have the best 1-5 but Quinlan certainly adds something to your attack and Percival is class. The forwards are well matched but I'd suggest Saints might just have the edge with Walmsley and Savelio especially. Some more cracking matches to come I think with Saints undoubted turn to come out on top at some stage. Your weak link is undoubtedly Walsh in defence.....Leeds have constantly targeted him.

I thought the opening by Leeds was about as good as it gets for us. I was certainly nervous that we hadn't had the game won after 30 mins as we'd done absolutely nothing wrong, played with great skill and speed yet were only two scores up. Make no mistake, Saints did really, really well to absorb the amount they did and then change the game's momentum. However, we had - just - done enough as it turned out.

Can't really imagine us playing at that pace of that opening while making zero errors every time we meet. If we were capable of turning it on at will we'd be nailed on certs for every trophy going. But of course we aren't.

It did feel a bit like the south Sidney game in that 30 minutes. I don't know if that's a fair comparison but Leeds looked unstoppable.

Leeds were front-loading their effort and gambling on running up a big enough lead to put Saints out of the game by the 20th minute. The point is such tactics are unsustainable. You can't play at that pace all game.

Which means you've just got to concentrate on matching their workrate on defence whilst keeping mistakes to an absolute minimum in possession.

Play out your six. Concentrate on making as much yardage as possible in the forwards, find touch with your kicks and play out the time.

It's the Rugby League equivalent to Muhammed Ali's "Rope-a-dope" technique. Allow the opposition to burn themselves out and then come on strong between the 20th and 60th minutes.

To be honest I thought Saints coped with it all rather well - BENDING but not BREAKING - with the exception of a scrum half who's so completely crocked he contributed to half of Leeds' points.

We didn't play out our six, we kicked early. We didn't kicked to touch, we kicked straight at the full back. We didn't play out our time, we gave it back to Leeds ASAP.

Not sure that's "bending"

We certainly played some really dumb football going forward. But our scrambling defence (aside from Walsh) was not bad. It performed well enough to keep us in the game - which was not the case in the previous two encounters.

What you are really looking for is to be level on points or ahead. If the opposition piles extra effort into trying to establish a first quarter lead and then finds itself behind, that's a major psychological battle won.