I'm worried that I'm turning into Saddened but I'm shocked at how poor we played today. I just wish I could post something positive for once but it's hard to find many positives in respect of the last couple of weeks.

Our tactics are so boring and predictable. We have two halfbacks who don't want to take on the line or have the ability at the moment to deliver a killer pass. Our attacking structure and shape is the worst in the league and our inability to get the ball into Percival's hands often enough is absolutely criminal. It's not as if we have one the best HBs Super League has seen on the coaching staff is it?

How we can play against 12 men and not take advantage or adapt our tactics to suit? We carried on playing one up rugby and it wasn't until late on when we actually started to promote the ball and we looked ok (I use the term loosely)

I hate to pick players out (I'm not in a great mood), but seeing Matty Dawson embarrass himself with the 'finish' in the corner was the final straw for me. How he has been given a contract extension I will never know. Please let's hope Makinson is back soon.

As an aside: it's interesting to note that I was at a fans forum a couple of weeks ago and Cunningham was slagging off Potter and Simmons saying that they had no personality and was explaining how their decisions damaged the club (short and long term). But from where I sit at the moment this brand of rugby we are producing is reminiscent of the Potter days and I feel that Cunningham has a much better squad thanks to Brown.

This +1

With a added suggestion to stop the penalty count our lack of discipline is killing us?

We played much better rugby than this under Potter and Simmons... we are rudderless

As we are in the present and not in the past, In the grand order of things, for curiosity where would you place the least experienced rookie coach in super league.

Mc Dermott
Wane
Powell
Anderson
Smith (T)
Frayssinous
Radford
Chester
Betts
Harris
Smith (B)

Cunningham.

The league places him 3rd and the league does not lie.

You've gotta take into account the squads at the coaches' disposal though. Someone like Betts has done well with what he's got and Widnes often punch above their weight, and what Powell has done at Cas is brilliant. Are we fulfilling our potential? We have the 2nd best squad in the league IMO but we often look not as good as Wigan and it wouldn't surprise me to see them get to the grand final instead of us.

In theory we are the second best squad on paper but we have had long spells with a very long injury list causing quite a lot of disruption more than other teams. We,ve been ticking over in the 1st 3 for most of the season now, I don,t think any of the other coaches would have improved us position wise.

Leeds obviously are hitting top form at the moment but can they keep this going for 2 months, Saints were pretty decent form wise in the first 5 games, if we can return that level in the last 4 games then we are pretty much back on the bike.


PS. where is Mugwump, is he going to hit us with a "War and Peace" version of opinion.

He's probably on some Australian cricket forum telling them they can still win the ashes.

I read statements like this on here regularly but what does this actually mean? Whenever I see these statements my immediate reaction is 'Says who?'

I think one of our biggest problems is that Cunningham's hero status makes him almost unsackable.

He's been writing his post since 7pm Saturday night trying to list as many injuries as possible and how much harder it is to play against 12 men than 13.

You think results this year make him sackable???

Semi final and 3 points off top, with 6 games to go.

Hardly what you would call sackable status.

Its usually the sky pundits isn't it, don't think these days saints fans take much notice of it due to our regular annual injury crisis negates it.

With Cunningham there is always going to be a transitional period between retired legendary hero to an experienced proven coach. He started off well early season but this was very much based on a team with few injuries hitting a bit of form and still influenced by the Brown effect of last season.
Second part of this season both coach and players are struggling for performance consistency, KC has not got big game coaching experience yet, so I don't know why people moan so much about it, if he gets us in the top 4 then he's done a reasonable job in his first season as coach.

I had nightmares about the Catalans performance last night. Just the wrong time of the season to have your pack exhausted and your form capitulating.

It's a good job we weren't good enough to reach the CC Final. I reckon we'd have lost that to KR had we got there.

To coach at Saints there's usually 2 targets you must meet with the fans but obviously only 1 target with McManus.

First target is to win trophies or be within a game or two of doing so. On paper that's great and I imagine when fans from other clubs look at these boards they're baffled when we talk of sacking coaches when we're sat near the top of the table. And that's because of target 2 which is to entertain and play the game the right way. When we weren't winning much (pre 1996) we were playing really good rugby and although it was frustrating not being able to push Wigan off their pedestal, we were at least proud of the fact we played entertaining rugby. Then post 1996, we started winning stuff and playing great rugby and us Saints fans ended up spoilt rotten.

It seems that Cunningham, a club legend, is a McManus man. He's his boss so I guess that's obvious. However that means he's only interested in getting us in a position to compete for trophies and thus playing 'safe, conservative, take no risks' rugby to achieve this. Which doesn't meet the criteria of the fans.

Saints have got the players to play expansive rugby. The try against Warrington from deep is just one example of that. I hope as time goes on and Cunningham gets more experience, that he becomes more confident and trusting to let his team off the leash a bit.