Totally agree. They don't lack quality in the pack but they certainly lack that aggression, that mean streak. The type of forward/s were the opposition just think 'Oh Christ' (Although he lacked a bit of aggression too) when they come on the field.
I agree that type of player give away a few penalties but they gain you so much more.

On a positive note I thought Lomax, Jones, Roby and Cloughy had great games. On the negative side we have lost that mental toughness that Cunningham, Sculthorpe and Graham use to provide in bucket loads. We are a 60 min team and look like the Jeckyll and Hyde teams we had in the 1980's.
Agree totally obout our pack and no impact from the bench, don,t think it's a quick fix either. Someone needs to get inside the heads of the players that it's n 80 min game and can,t switch off anytime in a game now. Quite a lot of games lost this season were self inflicted where we have some how managed to find a way to lose, until we fix the mental toughness........we will always be this Jeckyl and Hyde team.

another Vila is what we need!

The important thing is we are in the hat for the next round. We did what we went there to do and for that we should be satisfied.

But let's not pull any punches here, it was a dreadful performance from start to finish. Widnes are a dreadful side, their defensive pattern is poor and they aren't particularly difficult to defend against IMO. Alot of the tries we conceded were pathetic, there were some shambolic one on one defending, poor options picked defensively and some lazy marker defence. We allowed Jon Clarke to dictate the ruck at times, which tells you how poor we were! We conceded 28 points in the 2nd half to the worst side in SL and the 1st two tries conceded in the 1st half weren't great from our perspective either. If we take Roby out of our team yesterday we'd have lost that game as practically every player bar him put in a below par or very poor display. Offensively, we picked the wrong option time and time again, our structure seemed to disappear and we made alot of basic errors. Our kicking game was the worst part of our performance, neither Lomax or Hohaia took any real control. Both our long and short kicking game was shocking and we never really pressurised Widnes with our kicking game. It was a dreadful performance individually and as a team and we cannot afford to play that badly again this season. Any other SL team would've beat us yesterday on that showing.

I understand the easter period takes it out of the players and I expected a poor standard game with some tiredness creeping in, but I didn't expect to witness that. It was up there with the Bradford display in terms of poor quality.

The players need to rest for the next few days and come back and expect some hard work, we need to be better than this Friday otherwise Widnes might sting us this time.

I'd suggest that fortunately for us Ah Van missed his kick and so we were lucky to end up with a win. No satisfaction. Just relief that we got lucky.

In that last 10 we went down to 12 men, Widnes had nothing to lose and they gained all the momentum, Meli's (I think it was him) mistake and playing too conservatively coming out all led to that Widnes fightback.

We shot ourselves in the foot unfortunately by taking the foot off the gas and nearly paid the ultimate price. Thankfully we just managed to scrape through into the next round.

That's no excuse. We went down to 12 men at Bradford but didn't concede a single try in that spell. Bradford are marginally better than Widnes I would suggest and therefore posed a greater threat.

But added to the other factors that I mentioned it played a part in the come back.

If I were to name a culprit it would be the very same person I ALWAYS expect to make a complete cock-up with clean possession on his own line: Meli.

Come on - how many of you people KNEW, like I did, he would commit suicide? If I could have bet money on that outcome I would be a very rich man right now.

Widnes may not be any great shakes, but in the name of credit where credit is due, who was the young lad kicking the ball for them? A very impressive kicking game, that's for sure.

Danny Craven. A St Helens lad, according to the commentators.

Can't remember what he was like with the ball in hand, but he sure could kick it.

Was with Saints until he was released when he was 15/16 I think.