If Saints play that well all season, they will win trophies. I doubt they would've played that well against the team we had last year - I really think that they raised their game, expecting a bigger battle.
My only criticism is that our kicking game was poor, perhaps when Chase is back it will take some pressure off Smith and this part of his game will improve? Walsh was exceptional for them.
Let's get 2 points from Widnes, and let's take that game seriously as a marker for improvement, then let's look at Wire - I mean, Myler and Ratchford shouldn't scare us!

Bonita Red - Please get your Dinner Party mate Nobby to abandon his 5 aimless drives and aimless kick/up and under tactics. Drives me mad and so predictable. Where are you Rangi when needed?

Saints were my tip to win the whole thing before a ball had been kicked, last night they shown why. Whilst they didn't do anything spectacular they did the basics so well. They were tough in defence, quick round the PTB and and moved the ball outwide quick. Add Mase Masoe to those forwards and they've got a formidable pack with a set of even better backs.

I don't think we'll play a better team all season and I don't think we'll play any worse. Had we scored at 12-0 when we were on their line it would have been different, we were the better team for the opening 10-15 of the second half but instead Saints went the full length and put the game to bed

Last night was never going to define our season, or show far we've come, as the Wakefield or London game wouldn't. Still too many individuals playing and I wouldn't expect this to change until after 12 games in.

We obviously missed Rangi massively on the left side, Griffin also.

Dust ourselves down and go again at Widnes next week, these are the games we should be winning.

You've correctly identified him as a troll, and not even an imaginative one, as he keeps it at the "I'm lonely, please be my friend" level of "your team's crap, your crowds are low". Then you spoil your good work by responding. Someone responds, he gets excited, he comes back.

Ignore him. It's like troll bleach.

Saints were outstanding. Their forwards took the ball at full pace, helped massively by the quality of James Roby, and this enabled them to bust through tackles and get the ball away. Our forwards, on the other hand, seemed to be jogging when they received the ball and then had to accelerate, giving Saints time to gang up. I can't recall a single offload all night. Morley made some good yards, but why does he do that little 'shilly-shally' when he gets the ball? Surely, he'd be more effective if he just ran at the defence. On the back of the lack of 'go-forward', the halves were swamped and our kicking game was pants. The only decent kick we put in all night was Stuart Howarth's near the end. Hopefully, this is all a timing issue and will improve as the season goes on.

I guess our MoM was Hock or Morley. Hope Hock's OK for the Widnes match.

After the game there was a muppet in the fans bar trying to kick off with myself and a friend when he heard us say that Saints will be the team to beat this season. Think we say last night the team everyone will have to beat and if I were a gambler I'd stick a bucket full off money on them to win the CC.

Luke Walsh could be the best overseas signing a team has made in a very long time, the way he ran the game last night was a throw back to when Long was at Saints and again they were the team to beat.

As for Salford I think if anyone thought we'd go through the season without the odd drubbing is a little naive, you can't make such wholesale changes to a playing rosta and not occasionally get out played and forget the game play.

Lets be honest, as good as Saints were (see my previous post) they're not 38 points to 0 better than us. You can guarntee we will give a much more realistic account of ourselves during the return fixture once we're half way through the season.

Certainly shown us the levels we need to aspire too.

RE our flat forwards, I havent seen a line so flat since the McRae days. Stark difference from the Wakefield game.

Also why are we kicking on the 4th tackle, giving ourselves extra tackling to do and then the kick goes straight to a man

Lots of people stood near me spotted the same as I had that we seem to be going into the collision with the intent of upper body contact, the sheer amount of times the first man in last night bounced off and allowed the Saints player to fall forward and effect a quick play the ball was mind boggling, not sure if this is a reaction to the new laws on a cannonball tackle or not.

On the kicking sorry but when you have a pack as dominant as Saints were last night the only option you need to be looking at is getting kicks dead to allow for a slowed down restart rather than broken field attack.

I honestly think last night showed we are lacking in the backline, S'au won't make that much of a difference. let's hope that the Doc has something up his sleeve to bring in someone who will add some spark there. Thinking of it if you look at who's scored the tries this season it's in the main the forwards.

From a Fartown perspective, being a low-supported team raising their profile year on year, let me offer some perspective;

What you find is the first step towards being a good team is beating the teams you know you're better than. I know it sounds simple, but it's actually very hard to do. We knew we were heading in the right direction when we were beating teams like Salford (bar last year!) and Castleford, Wakefield. We had a better squad and we played as such. Then we had to get the hoodoo's off our back;

Never beaten Bradford [x] - 2007
Never got to the playoffs [x] - 2007
Never won in the playoffs [x] - 2010

You build up, you don't go straight to the top - the dream is alive and very well. Yes you might have to wait another 2-3 years to do it, but I look forward to your courageous Runner Up performance to Huddersfield's 2017 Super League Grand Final win (Our fourth in a row )

Are you going to post this every time we get beat, like last season?

As a Saints fan, Id say Salford really suffered last night from all the hype that Marwan and the media seem to have created around them. Its very difficult to put together a team of new players and expect them to compete from word go. Look at Gateshead Thunder when they joined Superleague in 1999, they had no limit on overseas players and packed their team with NRL quality players and still only managed to finish 6th in the league.

I see Salford as a longer term project and success overnight is an unreasonable expectation. They need to continue building their youth developement deparment and with all due respect to the Puletua's and Meli's of this world, their furture signings need to be players who are in their prime, not at the end of their career. Puletua has been making up the numbers at Saints for the last few seasons and hasnt been able to play longer than 15min stints. Expecting him to come into the side and have a big impact was a little unrealistic.

All the sky sports build up was Salford, Salford Salford....oh and lets not forget about Saints. That doesnt go unnoticed by the players and IMO, they turned up last night to make a statement, you could tell when Amor was interviewed as MOM, the first words that came out of his mouth was how many highly paid players Salford have but Saints wanted to show what a "team" can do, he was proven right.

I think most Salford fans expectations are top 6, which I think is reasonable considering the money that has been spent, but you need to realise there will be plenty other teams looking to raise their game against you to prove a point. Unless they find a way to win the tough games soon, it will be consistency that will let you down. Marwan apologising to fans on twitter after the game is all well and good, but making promises that Salford wont play as bad ever again? I think that depends on how good the opposition allow you to play, which is what happened last night.

TS - Probably - but if you like Nobbys style then so be it. I don`t but I remain a fan. Lets hope Rangi brings the backs to life. I also post when we win. In fact - unlike yourself I actually start a few threads. Its easy to snipe like you do in just one bitter sentence.

This I agree with.

saints put the same amount of points on us (38 ) as they did to Wire in the first game , and that was a settled team essentially stable with GF top 4 experience . We're a new team and that was our first serious hit up , unsurprisingly we came off 2nd best in all departments .
I was disappointed, but no sense in some of the disparaging comments on here.
My only concern is the rate we are losing players to injury ( Hock , Gleeson . Mullaney last night )