Agree with most if not all of your points.
Hopefully we will kick on from here, but think with our carboard cutout manager that perhaps its all wishful thinking.

I agree with that. I enjoyed the game and thought our defence was tremendous. Huddersfield struggled to get into any sort of rythmn until a good twenty minutes or so in the second half when they applied a lot of pressure and should have come away with something.

The one thing that was more mixed than anything else was our kicking game. We'd put in a couple of great kicks (the two bombs to the corner that pinned them back in their red zone was excellent) then follow it with a kick down the kick returners throat.

If we can play like that again, particularly in defence, we will be in the Grand Final.

Now I know where you got your name from.

Huddersfield Reserves played a good brand of Rugby against us, IIRC

Saints defence was awesome last night. Not only did we tackle we was hurting them which we've not done all year.

I thought our pack was top class last night, making good hard yards and tough in defence.

Tony p and clough was IMO our stand out forwards. I'd say that was tony p best game for the club.

The attack was shocking again! Wello was good in defence and made some very important tackles.

The halfbacks are the major problem, they don't create anything for the team at all. Longy is showing that sir mac was 100% correct in letting him go.

The way I see it, if we don't sort this attack out we ain't got a chance in hell of winning the grand final. We should have put hudds away last night but let them back into it.

It's the 1st home game in a long time tho that I went home happy as saints did put the effort in and looked something like the old saints did in defence.

Why wasn't Kyle moved in to the middle for a spell?

Come on folks lets give Huddersfield some credit in defence. They were outstanding again. We gave the ball some air last night and pushed ourselves through the defensive lines to make good yards as well against the best defence in the league. Like the first game of the season we got over the line with excellent defence preventing some scores.

After that first game at the Galph I think most of us identified immediately that this year's Huddersfield team had some potential because their defence was great back then. We didn't control the ball as well as we could but we were strong carrying the ball last night even if you prefer to favour judging attacking effectiveness on flair instead of efficiency, graft and the application of the game plan.

We have room for improvement with the ball but we played bloody well last night against a tough team and it's about time we give the side some credit for responding to this supporter-manufactured crisis that has as much credibility as Jarrod Hayne's claim that God enabled him to win the Dally M.

Whilst I agree the side deserve credit, I can't agree we played bloody well.

We defended bloody well, but we were our usual scrappy selves for much of the game with the ball and Huddersfield were atrocious at times.

If we can keep up that intensity in defence, we'll give ourselves a shot at overcoming our rustiness with the ball.

How much of that disruption though is down to playing against a team that doesn't let you walk all over them? I'd say quite a bit. Had we played Hull KR last night and they'd played like we did on Friday we've have battered them in a much better style than Leeds did. Meli would have had four or five against Rovers on Friday.

People are going OTT here.

We won the game and have a Semi Final in two weeks time.

We looked alot better than previous weeks and rather than thinking negatively that it's all over, I just feel little areas need tweaking and we'll be fine. Our kicking game needs some work as does the timing with the moves, but we certainly caused a strong defensive team plenty of problems.

If we continue with defence like that we'll be in the Grand Final.

You expect teams to not let you walk over them, it's the play-offs. It will be no easier against Wigan or Leeds and we'll have to perform better with the ball, that's all I'm saying.

Not knocking the effort, but the execution was still a fair way off and our last tackle options were still very poor for the most part IMO.

I'm not being negative, I've been one of the only positive people on this board for weeks!! I'm just being honest - we're getting there but we still need to step up a couple of gears if we want to win the GF.

I'd like to give credit to Potter in this because instead of trying to turn us into Catalans Dragons Mark II, as he did at the CC semi, with us making futile drives up the middle and precious little else, this time he got it tactically spot on, using the one weapon we do have in our armoury to bring the game to Hudds and that's our defence. When we play with enthusiasm, as we did last night, our defence is up there with the best and all credit to the lads for never giving up, even when certain members of the team gave away penalties and field position. I've never been one for defensive games but last night was a good match to watch, even though the whole thing was about defence.


I disagree about the supporter-manufactured crisis. Longy in the media I think highlighted what has certainly been at least partly responsible for our play: Potter's apparent insistence on playing people out of their traditional positions. That has caused confusion as we've approached the tryline and has no doubt knocked our confidence. I think fans have been spot on to question what has happened to our team this season given that even during those times when we have not had injuries, our team has never been allowed to settle and the performances have reflected that. Add to that the team's own lacklustre attitude and the arguments on the pitch, and I think it's perfectly reasonable to assume something is not right behind the scenes.

I'm in no way confident of our chances. We could just as easily revert to our awful play in two weeks' time, but because I'm a fan and because I so want us to be called champions next year, I am hopeful that Potter is in fact finally fixing whatever it was that had gone wrong, and that in two weeks we will build upon our success last night by making sure our finishing in attack is as good as it used to be and indeed should be, given the talent we have on the field.

Potter got it spot on tactically when we had the ball aswell. Saints identified that Hudds play a compressed defence, so we got the ball wide and kicked to the corners a few times. We also attacked the blindside on numerous occasions. If our execution was better we'd have been out of site on 60 minutes.

Totally agree. I was encouraged to see an absence of that confusion as we approached the line. I just hope that this isn't another false dawn but that we can build on last night's performance by tweaking our finishing because if we do that then we are in with a shout.

The semi final was crying out for the the game plan we used last night and lost count of the amount of times I shouted kick in the semis.

The wolves did it to them in the semi so was it potter just copying smith or did he work it out himself?

We didn't kick on from pinning them back with the kicks which is why the score was so low.