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.

See that small club mentality is still there at Widnes, If beating us is all you care about.

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.

Meh, can't see what the problem is, we've got 20+ practice games still to go, and so long as we win at least half, we'll be firing on all cylinders for when it counts.

See people are looking at this in the context of it's only one game, beginning of the season against a team who usually have the wood over us rather than actually looking at some real long term problems.

No one is leading the team, there is no one directing play, telling people where to stand and what runs to make, watch ANY game Briers plays in and he never shut up, he was always waving and pointing to someone.

Westwood isn't a captain, love the bloke to pieces but he's not a captain.

Mike Monaghan isn't a half back, never has been, never will be, Tony needs to put that to bed NOW. Not after a few games, GAME 1 DONE and DUSTED, get it out his system and forget it.

Riley and Evans are a season off being in a top 4 side, big guys but they don't have the strength that comes with maturity, not sure on England, we'll see.

Asotasi needs to step up, if anyone thought his performance was adequate last night, they need their bumps felt, i'll give him a bit more leeway though seeing as it's all new to him.

Ratchford, either play him at fullback or play him at standoff (preferable) but don't be shifting him about constantly so that he doesn't know his ar5e from his elbow. Keep him in the middle, give him chance to mature into a good 6 and to get an understanding of his halfback partner. If not, drop Russell, stick O'Brien in the middle and leave him at the back.
Halfbacks need understanding, an almost intuitive understanding of each others game.

Atkins..similar to Westwood needs composure especially on tackles 1 to 3, this has been apparent for a while so why isn't TS saying something?

Riley although not a scapegoat does seem to be in the fortunate position of having no competition because he has looked way short of what we need to sure up the left edge, granted Atkins doesn't help but he has to take some responsibilty.

Theses aren't problems that just appeared yesterday, TS needs to sort it out pretty sharpish for me.

Presumably I am a "", though not sure why. At the end of the day I am a paying customer and as such have a right to an opinion. You can kid yourself, but yesterday just wasn't good enough.