It was a great display especially 2nd half. To go to Warrington and concede just 6 points is a special effort, they haven't been restricted to that number of points for over 3 years. I don't care if they bombed some chances, they're a good team, they will create chances. To keep them to 6 is a great effort and backed up by restricting Wigan to 18 points last week, it tells you where we are defensively right now. Full credit to Rush and the players, it's an area where we've been good for the majority of the season.

The problem still comes when we have the ball. Some of the errors we made were shocking, Perry and LMS being the big culprits. Perry had a shocker and hopefully it was a one off and he'll play better next time. We need to make sure we're not giving away cheap ball and cheap penalties because Warrington, Leeds or Wigan will punish us if we keep gifting them possession. On the positive I actually thought we utilised our dummy runners and executed our set plays alot better yesterday than we have done for a while, which is good news. Hopefully with the week off we can sharpen up in this area in training because we were a threat at times yesterday. I also think our best ploy is our offloading which has worked well for us the last 2 weeks. When Puletua runs down the middle and offloads the ball it causes chaos as he attracts 2 and 3 defenders. You won't beat teams by playing one out rugby, you need to attack teams and we're at our best when we have a bit of space in broken field especially with Roby, Lomax and Hohaia supporting the offload.

Fantastic display. As Blobby says, we were still a little frustrating with the ball, but there was much more running off the ball going on, which made us a more difficult proposition to defend against. Our kicking game was better, but I can't help feeling that was more through luck than judgement.

Our forward pack was magnificent, as was our defence all round. Our line speed was rapid, and, most pleasingly, our edge defence was very patient and composed. It will need to stay that way if we're going to compete with Wigan and Wire in the rest of the playoffs.

we just could not handle soliola and i also thought that pulatua (sorry about spelling) was immense aswell

With one home game to go and then a grand final theres the very real, and terrifying prospsect of a 6th consecutive grand final defeat on the horizon.

Every year it's the same old story. After a great playoff run:

-We are playing better this year
-The players will use last years defeat to motivate them
-previous defeats have no negative impact
-Our style is better suited to the game
-It has to be our turn this time
-The coaching staff are better
-The opposition aren't as strong as last year

Insert above where applicable since 2007.

Oh of course, saints still have to win one more game to get there, and win it they will, at home against most likely warrington, pretty much mirrowing their route last year in beating 2nd place away and home to make it.

Then the oponents, should leeds dispose of catalans, will either be wigan or leeds. It's pretty unlikely leeds will make it all the way, but theres always that nagging doubt, and should they beat catalans, wigan will pick them in the club call and you have a 50/50 game in which leeds will be highly motivated.

Surely it couldn't be another leeds saints grand final, never, not this time, it really couldn't............could it?

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, we still have a tough Semi Final in two weeks time. If we do play Warrington again, they'll be determined to beat us and they have already beaten us at LP this year.

But, should we make a Grand Final I think it's important we don't fear the game and attack the opposition like we did yesterday. We need to be positive and not afraid to offload the ball and not afraid to put some set moves on and cause the opposition problems. One out, safe rugby will not beat a team in a Grand Final, defences are at their most intense and you need to attack your opposition. Either way, let's 'ave it! We're not favourites to get there and we're not favourites to win it, so we have nothing to lose.

There was alot more offloading yesterday, hence alot more ball going to ground from both teams, but also for Saints we had overlaps and tackle busts and breaks.

You have to accept that with more offloads there will be more dropped ball, but so long as it's not in our 20m area I can live with that. It makes the game more entertaining and gives us a chance of winning against quality defences.

As for the kicking game, mmmmmm not that crash hot, but then we did not really need one yesterday. I think there was one decent kick but that was after Brett went off.

Your lads were really up for it last night and once we went behind I detected a "never mind, we get another chance" mentality with ours.

Predict a Wigan/Saints final, with a Wigan win due to their key players coming back after injury.

A fine balance must be struck because if you are trying to offload alot and put on alot of set moves it increases the probability of errors and surrendering easy field position in a grand final is a cardinal sin, the game can be out of reach in the blink of an eye.

Without wishing to sound basic and state the obvious, you'd go out to control field position and once you have the territory, that's when you try and attack the opposition.

And for that reason I think we should do as we did last night and leave the offloads to our two offload specialists (TP and Laffranchi). They are both superb at it and I've yet to see either of them get it wrong when they do it.

A game won with determination and commitment. Our forwards took it to them in both defence and attacks and out defence outside was sensational.
Perry and LmS struggled bu Tony P, excelled and were well supported by v solid showings by Boof and Clough. Roby was also very busy.
However, the ball isn't getting to our centres wide of Wello. The kicking game was a real mixed bag. Hohhaia was pretty quiet and, while Lomax came up with some great plays, on the whole he's still struggling to impose himself as a halfback without the sufficient support.
I mentioned in another thread they needed a rocket up the for big games. We got that, but my other concerns for the side still ring true.

I agree. It's very frustrating, especially on one occasion last night where if he'd have passed instead of going for the line himself we would have been in for a try.

i doubt we will beat wire in a couple of weeks and if we do i doubt we will beat wigan in the final. but then i doubted we'd beat wigan or wire too

Our back play isn't going to get any better this year sadly. We have 2 halves who are basically there just to tackle, hand the ball off for forwards to make inside runs and make the odd scoot.

Super effort. Defense was as good as I've seen for a long while.

Patches of excellent play in attack.

However the kicking game was woeful (bar 2 repeat sets on 60-65 ish minutes).
Every clearing kick went straight to the defender and the couple of attacking kicks
were poor and panic, which put Saints under pressure. Lomax is great in broken play
but can't handle a 5 tackle play. Lance H coasts in attack and still hides behind the ptb.

That said the kick chase was off the chart and offset a lot of the weak kicking.

Neither HBs will turn into Long Briers or Brough with the boot in two weeks.
However some better kicking both clearance and 5th tackle would make a huge difference.

If lance would take Wellens spot on the wide plays there might be a bit more ball for the centres also
or at least a better last pass.

Can't knock the effort and Saints are giving it a real go and are taking it to the big boys.

Spot on sir. To me we looked stronger in the forwards by halfway through the first half. What was giving Wire the edge was that we were piggybacking them up the field or turning it over and putting pressure on ourselves. In our first serious possession down in their end we scored. It'll be very interesting next time because Tony Smith is a very strong tactician and I'm sure he'll look to exploit that Atkins side again.