Regarding the McManus piece and the upper-case 'THAT', I think he was emphasising what a chairman's role [iis not[/i rather than what a coach's role [iis[/i. However, given that Brown has been keen to suggest that we weren't far away in the games against Wigan and Leeds, I think the implicit message is that our coach needs to re-calbrate his sense of what is an acceptable level of performance for this squad.

Regarding the match, I've got mixed feelings about it. In many ways it was a typical top v bottom clash, with the intensity going out of the game after 20 minutes. We did dominate London physically, particularly in the first half, and our overall game management was good (keeping your opponents in their own half for 30 minutes is an achievement no matter who you are playing). It's worrying how poor we were in aspects of the game that require communication and organisation, though. Our attack was poor. Walsh was brilliant overall, but he does like to go wide a bit early for my liking. The ball keeps getting out to our centres and wingers with defenders right on top of them, because we're not doing enough work in the middle to lay the platform. Our edge defence is even worse, though; it seems at the moment you only need to string a couple of passes together against us and you're guaranteed numbers.

The best action on that field last night was watching the girl's play at half time they made more yards than Mose?

I don't think I've seen a "supposedly" good team opened up so easy. Even when we was playing well early on I commented on how any team that moves the ball wide with runners will open us up with ease.

Up to the Wigan game, tho I don't think our defence was great, we had the motivation to get back as at the time we was "perfect" but soon as we lost that perfect record, we lost the desire to win at all cost.

When the perfect record went, we was dropping off tackles that we had been making, we wasn't running wirh the power and aggression pre Wigan.

We've had 3 good defensive performances this year (Warrington, Salford and Leeds) the recurring theme is in all 3 we had a point to prove. (In browns eyes at least)

You can't nil a team and be bad at defence (Leeds for example I'm sure everyone will agree are very well drilled in defence and are yet to manage it), so we CAN do it, were just not, so the question is why? we all know defence is about attitude, and since Leeds, our attitude stinks. Has there been a fall out at the club (and McManus has decided to wade into?) or have our players believed there own press from the first 5 weeks and not bothered to train since? Whatever the reason, until the attitude returns our defence will remain leaky.

Thought it was interesting, londons first try was a carbon copy of the first try Warrington scored,

Ok so edge defense is a problem.

Why?????

We have 2 great wingers going forwards, are they to blame for our edge defense?
Is it the centres?
Is it the second rowers?

It's not always the last man in the line to blame.

Do we drop our wingers back too soon and too far. Sometimes they are dropping back on the 4th tackle.

Is this because Lomax can't cover the field for kicks?

I did notice against Leeds we did ok up to the 4th tackle. We could pin them down somewhat, but at the 4th and fifth tackle they would spread it wide and have the numbers on us.

Its a number of things. Poor one on one, poor decision making, players being lazy not getting across, players not wanting to tackle and quick play the balls.

Basically not committed enough

I agree and Soliola is one of our biggest culprits at the moment. On current form he is playing dreadful.

In a nutshell: Poor Coaching. I'm sorry to say this, but I don't think that our coaching set up is anywhere good enough for a club like Saints. There is no basic structure in the team, there is no passion, and above all there is no motivation whatsoever.

Does anyone have any insight into what goes on with the coaching.
Is it just brown, brown and the king, other coaching staff???

Louisi (sp) is his assistant

When I watched the match back after I'd returned from the game I noticed that Stevo had a rare lucid moment and made an astute observation. He said that we were operating a sliding defence within our own 10m when we should be marking one on one at that stage. He also asked whether Brown was setting us up like that. I think that could go some way to explaining why we are failing on the edges as invariably it is on goal line defence that we are doing so.

I don't think we slow the play the ball down enough, teams are up fast and attacking before we set. Pretty strange as Brown used holding down tactics at hudds.

Crikey. Well, [ieven a stopped clock[/i and all that.....

Reading some of the posts on here, you would think we are battling relegation as opposed to being comfortably the 2nd best squad in the comp.

Yes, there are areas to improve on and yes, there are valid criticisms of some that can be made, but I just wonder to what extent the early 2000s have spoiled Saints fans.

We are grumpy sods.

But I think people will start to recognize this come mid point of the season. At that point you can start to measure yourself against the rest.

At the moment we are measuring ourselves against a dire 10 days.