Strange reaction against a team they don't consider rivals and who accuse us of treating the game like a cup final. If we get past our game against whoever finishes sixth I'm confident we'll win the whole thing, unfortunately I'm not confident about that first game.

I would love to blame the RFL and Liam Moore but as an adult I'll acknowledge that Saints were the better team tonight and deserved to win.

I’ll say it again…

PACKS WIN GAMES

They smashed us, far too weak, far too predictable 4 up drives. Same shat Price tac tic that once again have us 2 scores down.

All on the RedVee are convinced they won the game in the middle backs, completely missing the reason being our pack was smashed!

In fairness RD quite a few are saying their pack battered ours which it did but their ruck speed killed us and that’s something no other team seems to match but overall quite a few poor individual performances from a few of our players most notably Widdop,Lineham and Hughes and why price continues to pick Sita is baffling as he’s totally ineffective bar the first few hits but on the bright side Williams is looking class even a few games in but sorry for me the GF a year to early.

Walmsley in that first stint was absolutely tearing us apart, no surprise we scored our 2 tries after he went off, If we play again and Cooper is back that will help massively, jack hughes and Jason clark in the same side just doesn’t work! to many plodders last night, fair play to saints top performance by a top side. They still won’t want to have us in that semi though that’s for sure and I truly believe we’re the team that will have the biggest hope of stopping their 3 peat .

We’ve played Saints, Wigan and Catalan six times in total and won five of them. We packed go forward and bad decisions on the last tackle. Saints were better and we lost. I’d take 5/6 against though three teams every year.

The performance against the better sides isn’t an issue, it’s the intensity we play with against teams further down the league that needs to improve.

For all the stick Bentley has got on here at least he takes it to you and has a bit about him. Our pack are like choir boys.

Saints were very good last night.
Their wingers and centres ran the ball in really hard I. The early tackles as they always do. I thought we missed Charney in that department a little bit.
Off the back of that their pack dominated when Lees, Walmesley and Knowles were on the pitch and D Clark had nothing to work off. I noticed Knowles go off for a rest and it was like a switch was flicked and we started to play.
Their line speed was unbelievable. I watched the interviews when I got home and noticed that Woolfe highlighted Naquima. He was getting off the line and shutting us down to stop us from trying to go round them because trying to go through the middle was not working.

I was impressed with Lewis Dodd. Not only in attack but he also did well in defence. He could well be the second coming for them..

So I think saints were in top gear last night and credit to them but we were not far off. I noticed J Clark did not come back on so for a large chunk of the game our right edge was Thewlis, Mamo, Williams and Longstaff which is not the biggest or most experienced but stood up reasonably well.
I think this year is beyond us as I just can't see up playing like that 3 weeks in a row but you never know.

Must admit I know pricey has waxed lyrical re longstaff, he's not very big, even as a junior, it's a concern that he's on the small side for a back rower

He stood up really well last night though and didn't look out of place at all against good opposition.

If they were on the Warrington squad our fans would be saying the same.

Every defeat would be blamed on Price picking the 'big names' signed from the NRL over them.

My view is that our biggest problem is allowing teams ,not just Saints, to make too much ground in their sets of six then we are getting the ball back in the wrong part of the field & we are then struggling to get away from our line. Some of these length of the field campaigns are being helped by our own errors & indiscipline piggy backing opponents upfield. Apart from that ,they were two pretty evenly matched teams.
It was also noticeable how Saints 's cause was helped by their "invisible men" standing well off side at ptbs which the ref failed to see on many occasions. I've said it before & will say it again , winning sides know how to play the ref.

Thanks for the entertainment though to both teams.