was long at headingley today?...sorry wrong thread

Just watching the replays now and it's making me angry more than anything else. Our defence was the worst I have ever seen it, McNamara really needs the sack. OUr inability to defend is going to leave us outside the prlay-off zone all season if it doesn't get better.

Shame the team wasn't as defensive

Crossley has all his confidence knocked out of him by mcnamara..3 times this season hes been promised he`ll be in squad and hasn`t yet..he wishes he had signed with giants like he was gonna do but macca promised him the eareth so he stayed..can see him asking for a transfer before long..why is kopzcak in front of him..for a prop he offers no go forard at all.

Another issue to be sorted out is the way we use interchanges.

Once again, we saw nothing of Halley, Worrincy and Kopczak until the second half, in fact we hardly saw anything of Halley and Worrincy. I noticed that St Helens used all of their 4 subs in the 1st half against Leeds - constantly looking to freshen up their line up.

It was obvious that in sweltering heat, keeping the same 13 (14 if y ou count Scruton being used) for 50-60 minutes was going to result in people basically being knackered in the last 20-30 minutes. The commentators commented a couple of times as to how tired we looked

It's like the coaching staff don't really 'believe' in the bench, only using them as something of a last resort. Halley must feel like he was dragged back from Wakefield just to make up the numbers - he goes from starting for Wakey to getting 10-15 minutes off the bench for us.

Nicky Saxton; Ryan Atkins, Richard Johnson,Karl Pryce, David Haley; Mark Flanagan, Matt Brooks;Tony Tonks, Richard Dobson, Matt James, Ben Feehan,Anthony Szostak, Brett Ferres.

Thats our reserve squad for 2005. Worrying thing is that it looks nearly as strong as our first team at the moment.


BTW, where's Saxton at now?

Thought Matt James was out on loan for the season?

What was platty thinking?

Even more worrying is how few of them have played in our first team 4 years later

Dave Halley gets a few minutes off the bench, and I think Johnson played one match.

Atkins was shipped off before he played (mistake, as it turned out), as were Ferres and Pryce. Matt James has played a few matches but seems to be out of favour

The rest have disappeared without a trace

Im willing to give SM till easter weekend but if he does nothing then surely its time for him to go no more exscuses plus Platt needs to be dropped makes far to many costly mistakes put Sykes to FB.

We saw what happened with Sykes at FB the other week.

Platt made that one awful mistake, which had it been otherwise could have been the start of a run by Nero for the matchwinning try, and he slipped and missed a difficult tackle (when he was last line of defence anyway) which let another try in - as happens to fullbacks.

What other costly mistakes did he make? And don't say missed tackles cos they all did that.

Don't sit on the fence. The next game is the Easter weekend. What worries me is that the team will raise their game against the local rivals and we will all be waiting for another month before something is done.

Indeed. Sykes is also prone to the odd brain fart too. I would keep Platt at FB because he did ok today and has looked good in the last few games. If we dropped a player after every big mistake we'd never have the same side each week!

One player who surely does need a rest is Deacon, he is adding very little to the side right now. His passing is poor, his general play kicking has been poor even his goal kicking has been inconsistent. But far more worryingly is the ease in which the opposition are running through him. His missed tackles have led directly to 4 tries that I can think of in the last two games. I'd promote Halley to the starting line up too to face Leeds.