1. Slow marker play which has been a problem down the years for us.

2. A tighter line, it was alarming how much yardage Saints made down the middle where their quick thinking players spotted the holes in our defence.

3. Some of our back up kickers need to work on their kicking game, we need another option and a plan B for when we don`t have Lee Briers.

4. Fitness to enable us to stay at the same pace that we seem capable of for 60-70 mins in these big games which would allow us to finish stronger and not to drop away like has happened before against Saints and again on Saturday, that wasn`t just down to a lack of rotation players. Saints always seem to find the extra energy when needed and that extra gear that we struggle to find late on in games.

5. Learn how to get a quicker roll on in the way that Saints always seem to do when they have the bit between their teeth, our play of the ball needs to be snappier and our 2nd phase to get in position a lot quicker.

6. We seem to have had a decent error count of late, we have got away with this against lesser teams but we got punished last night against a better side, we need to learn to respect posession more.

Feel free to add anything, these are just some observations, you may disagree or have your own ideas what needs to improve.

You need to control the floor more so that you control the speed of the game, resulting in the team not being as tired in the last 20 minutes like what happened last night. Also makes it a lot easier for the markers as they have more time to get set.

Slowing the ptb is a key issue and in the tighter games against Saints, its been our inability to control the ptb that has cost us. Last night was the result of a number of things going wrong, but I would sort the ptb and ruck areas out first. As simple as it may seem, it is a vital area of the sport that good teams practice over and over again.

The markers seem to take a rest after the 5 th tackle expecting a kick. This can leave us vunerable to running plays

Do you not think the performance on Saturday was vey untypical of how he has had them playing in previous weeks? I have a feeling normal service will resume this week.

that was the single biggest difference between the two sides last night...

I mean Sometimes we took 6 seconds to play the ball ...
I think the Ref could have helped because its fine Locking on to the tackler but you cant simply have two players just holding on to a player and quite clearly not rolling away, but Saints do seem to get away with/do it well, whatever your view may be

and there was one time when we tackled Clough and put him on his back but he still managed to turn and get up and play the ball before our tackler had even got off the floor.!

Smith needs to address our mental block when it comes to games against the Saints.

Everytime we play them everyone knows what the outcome will be, Wire will play well and give them a game but will always lose even if they really deserved to have won and should have won.

Its like the players are programmed to lose against saints. Its such a regular occurrence that wire v saints games are becoming predicatably boring.

We let Saints control the speed of the game for too many long periods during the game, which they capitalised on a scored tries. What I noticed was that the Saints players never really were put on their back and they often stopped on impact with a tackler and remained in an upright position which allows for a very quick play the ball from which players like Eastmond took full advantage from and cut us up the middle. I felt we lacked a little bulk and experience in the middle what with Rah and Morley missing but stand in did a great job. Cooper put himself about quite a bit.

In previous weeks we have not been playing against any top opposition that would punish mistakes like saints do and did, i think it was Wolfette that posted on here after the Celtic game where she said that if we make as many errors as we did against Celtic and play the same sort of rugby then she feared for our chances against St Helens. That prediction came home to roost as saints scored quite a few points from our errors and mistakes.

At the end of the day we conceded 40 pts at home and if you do that your not going to win many games if any, the pattern was similar to a lot of previous St Helens games where we lifted ourselves for 60-70 mins and then fall away at the end.

Tony Smith has done well since he has come in but maybe with this current squad he has found out what the level is and its capabilities, not a lot changed for me against Saints where it was a spirited effort again but the end result was very similar to a lot of our past games against them.

The shining lights for me were Ben Harrison and Mike Cooper as thats where our future lies in these younger players, the rest of the performance basically had a lot of deja vous about it.

Don't think it's the squad. Give him an off season and a pre-season...

You know Rob, I don't think we fell away really. I've watched the game since, a couple of times, yeah we were fatigued, that comes with rotating off fifteen, and starting with only three frontline props, so you have to factor that in, but up until literally the last seconds we were out there, giving 100%.

We were 6 down at HT, lost by 14, so the second half deficit was only marginally worse than the first. Saints just killed us by executing key plays at the right times, and that was that really, the difference if you will.

We need to win a few grand finals and challenge cups so we are allowed to be offside at every play the ball.

I know where your coming from and i take your point, it just feels like deja vous though like we have been here before. Saints lost Fasavalu and they also had a couple of walking wounded, it just seems that when required saints find this extra energy and the extra gear from somwhere, maybe that comes with experience of them being in so many big games over the years where at times they will have had their backs against the wall and have learnt how to dig deep.

Maybe with time and touch wood some bigger games under our belt we will learn how to do similar, i guess its a sign of champions when you can raise your game when your up against it like saints have done down the years against us.

Yeah and don't forget this game is disproportionally "bigger" to us than Saints. To be fair this is not their derby and, to all intents and purposes, just another regular season away game playing another mid-table side. Yet, still, they can raise their intensity enough to win.