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.

I disagree there. It means an awful lot to their fans and players. Plenty of badge grabbing and chest beating going on from their players.

we just lack a cutting edge we need to kill off games a bit quicker.

I think it's a bit like The Ashes in 2005, they don't want to be part of the team that allows Warrington to win and breaks that strangehold. I think the Saints players are acutely aware of our record and take great delight & pride in maintaining it.

TS should be addressing envelopes to Salford, stuffed with enough money to bring Myler to the HJ. Failing that we could try and buy Eastmond! lol