I've been worried about this for the last few months, but tonight confirmed it for me. James Lowes is going to ruin us.

Okay, we were 14 points up, but at the end of the game we were further away from Saints that we have been for a good while.

5 drives and a kick. Sorry, I'm not interested in that. Our forwards are awesome, but I'm not sure he knows how to coach backs.

I was disgusted with the way he dragged Penny off after he pulled off a great tackle on his opposite number. What is his excuse?

Monaghan and King are a waste of space, even more so with the tactics Lowes uses.

I'm usually an optimist, but tonight was terrible, it really was.

With having all four of our props fit i thought our tactics were fine, driving up the middle was working well. The one thing i would question was the high ball being put up to Gardner when there was a rookie winger on the other side.

Bit unfair and too early to say Lowes will ruin us. Lowes has a massive repair job on from the last bloke who brought in the likes of King and Monas.Lowes is stuck with them.
Judging Lowes on recruitment, well if we're going by tonight he's done ok, both Higham and Carvell looked an improvement.
Time to judge Lowes is at the end of the season, not now.

We seem to have a huge problem scoring in the second half.

Same last year.

I'll just add that it was 6 tries to 2. They battered us.

very good point too early to criticse lowes he's stuck with some of cullen's signings who everyone now knows are flops i don't care if he turns us into most boring club ever i want to win something!

You lost to a very good team which would hold its own in the NRL. As a neutral I would say you looked better than last season. Riley is a good prospect for the future and Higham has been a good player for ages. Chin up lads!

Let's judge Lowes on what we have seen, that's all we can do.

Even the commentators commented on how it was all forwards, and Briers and Monaghan hadn;t been involved. We are a poor man's Bradford Bulls.

I may be going over the top, biut actually, I am very angry with tonight's showing.

Surely you play to your strengths, our props are probably the strongest four in the league. We had to reshuffle in the backs due to injury, ergo drive it up the middle, which was working well. Most of the damage by saints was done on the outsides. I wouldn't blame Lowes for getiing it wrong (apart from the bombs to gardner) more our inability to stop saints around the ruck and our backline being woeful at defending.

Our props were excellent, they really were, but they will not score the points. The first 3 or 4 tackles per set were excellent, the others, were rubbish.

6 tries to 2, is a good hiding. Had Long had his kicking boots on, it would have been 36-14, and that would have been a truer reflection of the game.

Shoot me down if you like but i honestly believe player for player we are as good as Saints.

Our achilees heel is not tactics or ability, its our fragile mentality. We're far too soft up top, and a lot of that comes from a lack of leadership on the pitch when the going gets tough.

I believe our players are as good as Saints' especially tonight. Our tactics were dire. Really, really bad. We were terrible tonight.

Talk about 40-50mins all you want, that is irrelevant.

Just one question....did we ever look like scoring in he 2nd half ??

Um, you [idid[/i score in the second half!

You just made a mistake and let us in and that combined with the moment that we clicked and then we found momentum. We started throwing it around and, well, that's not what Lowes had been coaching. Unfortunately. I preferred the throwing it around Wire style of play. I was looking forward to a real end-to-end game tonight. I love watching Wire in full flow because they have similar open rugby style usually to Saints (I like open style rugby). All Lowes really needed to do was secure your defence. I think you were actually closest to us in our previous game, when Long pipped you with a drop goal. I think that is what Wire should look like. Fantastic open rugby but with solid defence. It will be a shame if he moves you away from that, though you may well end up being more successful with the style of play used in the first half. So long as it is used for the full 80 minutes! (That's a tough call for any team)

If the game had gone on for another 15 minutes then Saints would have scored 40+, towards the end it felt like they were going to score from virtually every set of 6.

Its either we have serious fitness issues where we simply fell away from off the pace or our achillies heel has come back to haunt us which is our overall poor defence in our own 10, teams at times find it very easy to open us up when close to the line.

We do some great defence in certain areas but you get the feeling that if a team injects any sort of pace into their attack when in our 10m area with several dummy runners then they will open us up very easily, its as if our defence is based on some great individual efforts rather than a team defensive structure.

On paper, warrington should be top 3. I have said for 2 years now that warrington will not fulfil the potential until they get a decent coach at the helm.

James Lowes is not the man to take them to the next level imo.

I'd say it's more a huge problem playing for 80 minutes than the scoring aspect. We started the second half just fine but seem to stop playing after 50/60 mins.

Funny how the Saints fans turned up just as the Warrington team went home.

Clutching at straws debate.



I must admit, that's the most one dimensional, boring Wire side I've ever seen and was very reminiscent of the Bulls team from around 2001. You've got a huge pack, but you've also got some good backs. To not use them is criminal.

We just couldn't capitalise on our chances. So many times we had the ball on Saints line in the first half and we came away with only 2 tries. Give away a couple of penalties in the second half and give Saints field position and they capitalised every time. Difference between a trophy-winning team and the trophy-losing team.

This really, is what made me start this thread, and is why I am worried.

Fans for years have wanted an end to the channel system our halves used, well tbh, I'd like it back for next week.
Briers was attacking the left flank a lot, and his passing isn;t as crisp that way, and our players aren't as good there.

Our pack did their job, but they were over-used.

That is a good point. He has brought in two honest players who will work hard for our team.

He wasn't responsible for bringing in dead weight like King (although I wonder sometimes if Cullen was either).

Fitness wise, we faded badly. You'd have to reserve judgement of that for now, given the fact that if there's any side in SL who can flag up your fatigue, it's Saints. Add to that, Lowes intimated that he felt we were a friendly short, so in theory it is excusable. Should this keep occuring over the next couple of weeks, questions will be asked, of Lowes & Halmshaw. It's two games now, the Hull KR friendly and Last Night, we've faded badly in the last 30 minutes, this cannot continue.

I do think though, knee jerks apart, and we all do that, all of us, that after another three or four games we'll have a decent platform to give our opinions on.

As disapointing as last night was, my view is we can't really make any sort of informed judgement on prospects and improvement until this first 'quarter' of the league has taken place. We have:

Saints A
Catalans H
Wakey A
Leeds H
London A
Hull KR H
Celtic H

There is only one game there you would pick as a banker, and that is the last one.

What would the expectations be for these games, considering they feature a match up against a team who stuffed us twice last year, a traditional bogey fixture against Wakey, the Champions, a tricky fixture in London and a game against a rapidly improving team who have beaten us in the last 2 home games, albeit the last one was a friendly.

To me, a solid sign of improvement from last year, and evidence of a more consistent attitude, would be winning all the home fixtures, as well as sorting Wakey out for a change. Of course, it's perfectly feasible we may not win a game until Celtic!

That leads nicely into the Easter fixtures, and again two very winnable games against Salford and Cas.

That's a load of crap. We were second after easter last year. Yet everyone is under the impression we had a bad year. Getting to the play offs is a must and getting there playing well is too. Other than that the first half of the season counts for nothing.