Quote: Halfdan of t'wide embrace "It wasn't a classic but when we pulled them back to within two points I really thought we could do it. Sadly an individual error killed us and that was game gone. Truth be told our completion rate in the first half wasn't good enough to my eyes - we coughed the ball up too easily too often. Second half we had Saints worried. The key moment may have been the penalty after they kicked out on the full when we went just 2 behind, we failed to find touch. A good set then would have had Saints rattled instead they grew in confidence and a poor individual error shortly afterwards saw them home and hosed.'"
I'll second that. I'd forgotten about the penalty that failed to find touch. We were probably a bit overambitious and tried to move the play as close to their tryline as possible in that moment instead of playing safe. Then Gale fumbled a simple pass to gift them their first points of the second half at a stage when we looked to have at least a 50/50 chance of forcing the win.
There were other frustrating moments when we were found wanting. A good break by Wilkes in the first half was wasted when he ignored (or failed to see) the option of a straightforward pass outside to the fastest man in our team for what looked from behind the opposite end to be a clear run at the line from around fifty yards out. During the last five or ten minutes of the first half we began to look very ragged. Their third try came after one of our players (O'Callaghan?) was first to reach a loose ball in goal but failed to deal with it, then their fourth try just before the break featured some very flimsy defence as Meli surged through to score. We badly needed the inrterval, but credit where it's due we really turned things around for a long while after that. With Howell, Randall, Temata, Williamson and Purdham missing from a shallow squad the eventual outcome was predictable and perhaps as good as we could have expected; maybe if two of those missing players had been out there it could have made a difference? On the whole though I felt this was a positive performance from our lads under the circumstances.
