The thing that really irked me last night was the lack of effort/fitness. When we had the ball we were almost stood still and passing the ball along a stationary line until a gang of saints players came in and jumped on the ball carrier....

then when saints had the ball, we stood still waiting for the opposition to run at us... You can excuse poor performance, but you cant excuse lack of effort... every side in superleague (apart from maybe London) would have beaten us last night

Saints played the game like it was a play off eliminator.. we played the game like no one cared about the result....It was a very very poor display... God help us when we play someone decent.

God help us when we play some team not decent too!

That performance was relegation football standard. Smith said we competed in the first half.
what was he watching, the Winter Olympics?

It really makes me laugh when the s on here are moaning and writing the team off after one game, these are the same people moaning about the fact that the league games dont matter and the season only starts in September, the same people that critisise every player for not being fully fit in February when the season doesnt start til September. We are playing the game and we will be one of if not the best team in the league at the end of the season again. Five players out that would be ib our starting 17. "Weak Bench"? Try putting Wood, Harrison, England, Russel and Grix on the bench and we look good as one of them will miss out.
Have your winge and get it out of your system as people may remind you of it in a few months time.

To be fair, i love a good moan

We were very poor last night, saints hit the ground running, we just hit the ground.

Just a couple of comments.

What on earth is M Monaghan doing at half back ? I thought Paul Cullen proved that wasn't a good idea. Is it some sort of loyalty by TS ?

It looks as if Riley is playing himself out of the team. His defence is woeful.

I think Dwyer should be brought in with MM moving down. He is obviously past his best.

Ratchford was poor last night, out of position time after time.

Tony Smith has been worshipped on here as a god. Now is a really good time for him to prove his coaching skills.

From an outsider looking in I thought your halves struggled due to your pack being completely dominated when Hill and Asotasi went off. Even with them on you struggled to make any kind of platform. As a result you went from side to side and the Sts aggressive defence had time to shut you down (All credit to saints). It is $hit playing in the halves behind a beaten pack as set structure goes out the window and plays become slow and predictable.

Some poor ref decisions didn't help either like but thats par for the course isn't it.

You'll still be up there though come the end of the season I have no doubt.

I assume your posting this with some irony given you havent won a league title in over half a century?

Losing Briers is massive for you and it will take time to get over it.

On the plus side your transition is being managed by a decent coach , we got Mick Plonker and he set us back years

No you're right, we played well and just got pipped to victory by Saints.

This is the most sensible post I've read. First five minutes all was rosy, even ten minutes - Bridge break down the right.... Then Atkins "knocked on" (really?) and St Helens got on a roll. We shouldn't have fallen apart like that but we did and the 40/20 was freakishly brilliant. Nine times out of ten that ball would not have ended up there. We did suffer when Hill and Asotasi went off (the latter was good with the ball, but I didn't see much intensity in defence) and Riley and Evans were on a hiding to nothing. But imagine if that was Wood and Harrison coming on.... Still, I thought Evans was ok. Second half we started to panic and then things started to compound each other (the Riley/Ratchford mix up; Westwood trying too hard). Still, when we scored our try, it was even in terms of the scoreboard in the second half. Then we went back a decade and let in two more tries at the end.

On individuals - Monaghan (M) was woeful but hey ho, he always was in the halves. Myler was invisible but we can all have off days - last year, he was player of the season in the first few weeks.

On comments from the fans - "too many penalties - that's the kids" at which point we'd conceded two penalties - Higham and Waterhouse. And many more random comments which give a whole new meaning to the word kneejerk.

Whoah whoah whoah, you can't go having an opinion........(whispers) you'll be accused of being a tossser.

You've got to tow the usual, "it's our year this year" line, don't you know!

The only reason i could see for Monas in at 6 is that he is bedding O'brien in and thought he would be better coming off the bench after 20 mins, no idea why but that is the only thing i could get from it.