He must have had it in his hands for a few hundredths of a second, whilst I'm sure Joel also had his hands in there. I'm not sure what the rule is with regards to possession of the ball, but Meli had lost it before he'd landed and he never seemed to have much with regards to control. I've seen players catch then drop the ball in those situations and the ref has played on. Another one of those grey areas that we as fans will never get unless the Wigan fans lend us the rule book.

I think they said his feet touched the turf again whilst he was still in 'possession', making it a catch in the in-goal. It was a tough call but I think 'try' and 'no try' could have been justified, we just got unlucky. I'm still not convinced that McCarthy even made contact with the ball on the last disallowed try, but I only saw that one reply; great thinking by McCarthy, either way.

I can only echo most of what has been said here: solid performances all round, with a few stand outs. It pains me to say this, but I think Atkins was a little off his recent form tonight.

I think Hohia, Wilkin and especially Perry got away with much more than they should have. That said, our penis were deserved and a few dubious things by us were missed. Nothing game-changing from either side, thigh, I don't think.

spot the freudian slip in that post

Another victory for predictive text entry via a so-called 'smart phone'...

Ahem: *penalties...

(...and it should say 'though', not 'thigh'...)

Too easy.



It sticks out like a sore thumb.

Highlighted the word 'penis', then says this. Freudian slip there? No? .

Sorry, my error has seemingly derailed this post.

That's a try all day long. How can you defuse the ball when the opposition player has it?!

He's clearly a very good player, but simply just not at #6, and I've yet to see any evidence that he will ever become fully effective there, and most definitely not while playing alongside Lomax. We're screaming out for an organiser with a kicking game in the halves to play alongside either one of them and Gaskell is about the only option for getting one of those we've got any time soom. Makes me weep....

Thought MMonaghan was back to his best when he came on, nice scoots and quick passing from dummy half. As for Benny Westwood - OUTSTANDING!!

It was incorrect. If Meli cleanly caught it in two hands (after having both feet in goal when he jumped) he would have diffused the bomb. However when his first hand touched the ball Joel's hand then touched the ball before Meli's second hand then touched the ball; this makes it a contested ball. Joel came up with it and scored - it was a try.

Also the one where Silverwood said he knocked it on to Michael, the ball went sideways!

I know when we moved the ball it tended to be to our left edge when we were on a big shift but all of the damage was with our right edge. The left side of the Saints defence took one hell of a pounding. Great tactics and I dont know who it was meant to wear out (Wilkin, Hohaia, Puletua or Meli) but it did the trick. There were about half a dozen sets in that second half that we just constantly run down that side with Westwood, Grix, Monaghan x 2, Ratchford and even Higham was used as a second rower down that side at one point to run it in and make them work. Then the kick would just go behind their left edge defence turning them round and asking that group of players to bring it back out.
Great game plan and it must put a smile on a coaches face when he identifies something, asks the team to execute it and it comes off. It looked like we never expected to score down that side just to make sure they werent up for it when they had the ball.
It was one of the most ruthless pieces of relentless attack against a small number of players I have seen since the CC Semi in 2009 when Monaghan decided that we would make Feka defend rather than run at us.
Brilliant - I would love to see Phil Clarkes Grid showing the pattern of PTB's for that game.

I dont often feel sorry for Saints players but James Roby never deserves to be on the losing side. With 5 minutes to go he was taking it up from first receiver to try and get them out of trouble, He is one hell of a player and it would be interesting to see his tackle stats for last night.

James Roby is immense. The lad has got everything, literally. Defence, passing, kicking, metre making, reads where he can set-up play two or three tackles ahead, rarely makes any mistakes...best player in Super League in my opinion.

I agree about Tony's tactics last night. Their big forwards didn't know what was happening, we were just too fast and too slick for them. At times it looked like we had one or two extra men. Their outside backs were exposed brilliantly at times too.

it was puletua, regardless of saints fans saying he's finished, we've struggled with him and soliola, as you say, we worked him over big time last night. Westwood never stopped running at him, and hohaia. Who by the way, is hot garbage.

Brilliant win. For me we didn't bury "the hoodoo" in Widnes last year - that could easily have been a one off - but after three wins out of four, on three different grounds, including our first win over them at the HJ and our first victory in St Helens since I started going, it's safe to say we buried it last night. Great performance and a huge relief.