I genuinely expected us to get spanked on Friday from start to finish. Saints still smarting from the GF with a point to prove & the new coach wanting to make a statement.

For us to hold them scoreless for 50 minutes doesn't happen often and in the first half we looked the business. However there was that feeling everytime they got in our 20 that we looked likely to let them in.

Big plus points were Higham, and Carvell was immense going forward. Finally we looked good from marker.

I said before the game that Jimmy's making was the selection of Riley at fullback. And it was. The lad was outstanding. The only problem is his lack of size in backing up. But his pass to Rau for the try was inspired. Dopeed the ball over the line yes, but amunite earlier got a nasy bang to his ribs & looked hurt for the rest of the game. He dropped the ball getting whacked in the mid section again.

Saints first try - Gilmour turned Johnson inside out & left him for dead. Jimmy brought on Bridge for him & the problem went away.

That last 20 minutes when Saints starved us of the ball, no team could live with that pace & skill. We couldn;t deal with the big nr 16, and when Pryce was turning in the tackle we were stuffed.

None of the defeat should be laid on Lowes shoulders to be fair. Westood, Carvell & Morley gave daft penalties away in stupid positions. These put pressure on us where the line broke. Penny has a lot to learn.The "Foot in touch" try from the first half, King had to vitually shove Penny into position to defend. When Gleeson's fit drop him & put Johnson on the wing. And I still stand by my comment that Matt King can't tackle 1:1.

My only problem was with Briers. The best example was the Gidley try where for some reason Brieres was defending 3rd man in on the left. He stopped defending & started gobbing off to the ref about a forward pass. The ball came back from the wing & they scored in the gap he was defending. Shocking. Briers you ain't captain, keep it shut & do your job.

The more I think about King, the more of an enigma he becomes.

He played his part in one of the meanest defences in the NRL, yet looks a million light years away from that player. Could it be the the almost blitz like defence suits him far more than our sliding, slower tempo line speed?

By this I mean he hits the tackler front on, no need to keep sliding waiting for his opposite nu,ber to receive the ball.

It is quite the conundrum.

Overall I came away from the game with a 'glass half full' optimism.

Obviously their are many factors that need to polished/rectified (all of which have already been discussed at length on this board).

IMO we were still right in the game until that berk of referee gave the knock-on against Briers when he was CLEARLY not playing at the ball with his leading arm and was concentrating on the tackle.
If this 'penalty' hadn't been given the resulting play would have had us in excellent ball position on the half way line.

Yes I know anything could have happened after this,(probably a knock-on at the first play the ball knowing Wires) but after this penalty was awarded the wheels came off big time!

Just my 2 penneth'

How refreshing from all the other threads this weekend...a POSITIVE thread.

With King I think it's the combination of the different style of line he's asked to work in over here. We play in zones where the Aussies (especially the National team work on the A-D defenders more, working around the play the ball rather than in groups. That cuts off the supply to the backs more & the Aussie sides attack deeper than us. Plus I think he generally struggles 1:1, he seems to plant his feet & is stuffed by a player attacking him laterally.

Plus our game is faster & attack oriented. In Aus they defend for 3/4 of the game & look to win it in the last 20 sometimes. We try to do it from the off. (Often to the detrement of the final score).

As we've had a British coach for years it's be interesting to see how the games against Aussi counterparts have panned out.

As I said we gave 4 daft penalties away 30m from our line & let in 4 tries. Nowt to do with coaching tactics.

Hooray. I agree. Gutted at first but in the cold light of day we were very good indeed.

TBH I thought that could have been the turning point, because we could have easily made a lot of yards and got a try or got saints defending on there own line, but instead we conceded soon after.

But as you said, we could have knocked on, and then they could have scored from the resulting scrum...

As I have posted elsewhere, we gave away some cheap posession which let Saints into the game (something they hadn't looked like doing before that), they got a roll on and we kept turning the ball over.

Control the ball, control the game. Cut down on the errors = cut down on the losses.

We talk about the same thing every year after a game at Knowsley Rd about how good we were in parts and how we nearly won the game with the usual lets take lots of positives from the game etc.

I`m a realist and i`ll say it as i see it, our squad gets stronger every year but the inconsistency remains the same. We are experts at losing games at Knowsley Rd that we should win, i don`t take any positives from us not learning how to close out a game against St Helens and the opposition going on to score 26 unanswered points which would have been a lot more if saints had a quality goalkicker.

Their were individual positives with the excellent SL debuts of Micky Higham and Gareth Carvell along with the work ethic of Chris Riley but as a team we never learn how to close out St Helens, like i said above i don`t take many positives from being 0-14 in front and then conceding 26 unanswered points and if the game had gone on for another 15 minutes the score could have been anything as saints looked like they could score from every set of 6 towards the end.

Call it negative if you want as it doesn`t bother me, i`ll just say it as i see it.

Rob, I will never understand your comments about games being longer. They are 80 minutes long and that is it, if the game would have been played for a further thirty minutes, would thaey have scored twice as many points?

I really don't get it.

That's ok. That is all we are doing.

I mentioned in a earlier post that it wasn't as bad as I first thought after watching the TV replay. A couple of errors turned the game and we then struggled for possession which Sintellins took full advantage of (as we know they can).

Its like when ive heard Eddie Hemmings say in the past that the hooter will have come as a welcome relief to side A, thats how i viewed the final hooter at saints because "IF" and i`m using that as a hypothetical scenario their had been a further 15 mins left on the clock then it could have been embarrassing as saints looked like they could score from each set of 6 towards the end.

Anyway ive said all i wanted too on this subject.

I'm not very well up on rugby tactics, in fact I haven't the slightest to be honest. But when I watched the Storm, I always thought King was relatively weak in defence, he'd often leave his winger struggling and gaps for the opposite centre to run into. The thing is, he had Turner as his winger and Hoffman as his second row, both quality players in all aspects.

But even so, King must have had something in defence which got him into that side, you don't play for Australia, NSW and be a key player for the GF winning Storm if you've not got something, since he's been with us, people have strolled through since game 1 (was it Hall who bagged two?).

Can someone explain the ruling on this? Last year Cullen left on the back of a similar decision which resulted in a Cas try, and obviously Friday's similar incident cost us a valuable try. But Lee Gilmour seemed to get away with another charge down, ball played the man scenario, in the Challenge Cup final last year where he blatantly held his arms up to do so.

Any chance of sharing your wisdom with us, Dom?

It didn't mate. Grix scored a try, the video ref didn't give it, at that time we led something like 34-18 and that would have been 40 say, we had all the momentum and the Castleford heads were down. In the end, some enterprising rugby & Monaghan intercepted pass later, Cull was a gonner.

I think since, the officials have realised that they got that one wrong, a bit like the obstruction 'no try' at Wigan when we were dominating early on.

Have you watched the game since?

"in the cold light of day we were very good indeed" Are you suggesting that the six tries we conceeded in the last 30 mins was us being very good?

It could of been a hell of alot worse, considering that we only really had one pre-season friendly before the match.

wigan,hullkr,swinton..............i make that three.

Totaly agree. Good post fella.

I think the most depressing thing about Friday night, was that at 14-0 I reckon most Wire fans were still waiting for the sting in the tail, and as if by a pre-ordained appointment, along it came!!...



Personally, looking back, it was obvious that Lowes sent the team out with a plan, and that was to simply bore Saints (and most spectators) to death, and steal a win.

Fair enough, nothing wrong with that, only our fitness levels were obviously very poor, and we simply ran out of gas with a quarter of the game to go.

What was a bit worrying was that there seemed to be no Plan B once Saints overcome the Plan A.....There was no attacking flair, which has probably a lot to do with the fact they were out on their feet, but also must have been a bit to do with the fact our half backs were virtually in their shells for the whole game....Suddenly being asked to spark when the has hit the fan is harder to do than it seems.

Whilst I agree that some of us have gone over the top and been pretty negative, I don't think, in any game where you lose by 6 tries to 2, you can be described as 'very good indeed'.

Had Long got all his kicks, like Hicks did, the score would have been 36 to 14. That score would have been a fair reflection IMO.

If if if if if. OK We were excellent in the first 55/60 mins. Then we were the victim of our errors and indiscipline. However I was overall pleased with the way we played for game 1.