Ben Barba is the best player I’ve watched on a Saints shirt. And I’ve been privileged to watch Roby, Cunningham, Sculthorpe, Newlove, Goulding, Long, Martin and Lyons. The man is like the essence of Saints distilled: speed, skill and a big smile all over his face.

I know everyone believes it’s a dead certainty he’ll be gone at the end of the year, but even if he is, what a year!

Thought the game commentary was very biased towards Cas, Jonathan Davies must have had his head in his hands everytime Saints scored, Brian Noble was the same as well. Peacock and Sinfield gave it a lot more balance.
Overall a good competitive cup game with no lack of effort from both sides.

Not as easy as last year when we bashed you about.


Not much we could do about the lack of full back. Most sides do their recruiting now till about August. October is exceptionally late for a good FB to be available.


Be a real shame if you blow it to Leeds / wigan in both finals but I can see that happening.

A bit disrespectful to cas. Wonder how you would have done without barba who is your best strike player as cas had to do without gale who's their most creative player. Ur defence is quality tho

Nothing disrespectful about it, if Gale had played the result would have been the same, he’s been poor this season anyway. I feel for Cas fans, they’ve been let down by the crap recruitment they’ve done. They had a chance to build on a great season but blew it with some poor decisions.

Saying it was easy was. Was a tough game with some long range tries and a few dubious ref calls putting u on the front foot. Don't get me wrong u deserved the win but take barba away and that's a much closer game and final score

Think it's the speed of Hardaker Eden and Roberts that's missing alongside the sharp play of Gale. Obviously Hardakers gone but that's the slowest Cas backline for a few season? Saints have a nice mix of big forwards and real speed Pleasure to watch, Just like Cas last few year.

The ASS [iis[/i disrespectful, or it doesn't post, that is its only function.

The only dubious calls were the missed Percival obstructions, apart from that I thought the ref was pretty fair. The score line suggests it was easy, Cas had a go physically but they had no quality or skill on show. Nothing disrespectful about calling a game easy.

I totally agree what you have written there. Wardle and Webster didn't cause much problem on the attacking front.

Saints' recruitment on the whole isn't nothing special. They've landed lucky that an NRL star had nowhere else to go and you're getting a year out of him. Around 4th/5th recently and then sign a FB due to his personal problems that lifts you to 1st before he ends up department and you'll be back down a few pegs.....almost identical story to Cas and Hardaker.

Easy win. Didn’t need to get out of third gear. Cas thought their forwards could just bully ours but I think 8-13 of the Castleford team are still in Luke Thompson’s pocket. Ben Barba is an absolute joy to watch and no wonder the young cas fans ignored their own players and made a beeline for him for selfies.

Regards

King James

What was the crowd?

That was the group of people surrounding the pitch.

Couldn’t have been many cas fans as all I could hear were the Saints fans

Regards

King James