You missed The Messiah’s last game and Lamb’s tears........

Our chase was terrible

Pride, that’s what I feel tonight. The side has come a long way in 12 months. I want to credit both sides tonight, they were immense and went to places I’ve not seen rugby players have to go to before. One or two things could’ve dropped the other way for us tonight but that’s rugby and that’s life and you can’t win them all. It’s been a tough period for everyone this last 8 months but tonight I felt alive watching that.

Well done to St Helens. I think we’d have beat any team in superleague by 20+ points tonight playing at that intensity but they, like us, refused to break. It feels like the first of a number of upcoming battles tonight between the two clubs.

Sat on the sideline is a marquee signing who if it was anyone else would’ve tipped that war in the middle in our favour. It’s been disappointing at times this last 6 months but to have the uncompromising my aggression back leaves me with a lot of hope for the future. It’s going to be difficult with an arthritic Burgess sucking the salary cap dry though.

It's ok to blame Hardaker for taking on a match winning penalty but shouldn't we also be looking at the Smithies tackle on half time? Had he just wrapped his arms around then there would have been no penalty!!

It’s not a night for talk of George Burgess IMO. Until you mentioned his name I forgot he existed. They had a half crippled Walmsley trying to play, so it wasn’t perfect for anyone.

In an ideal world we’ll manage to part ways but it’s likely he’ll just sit in his deal.

Yep.

3 key moments and we came out the wrong side of them all

Novel thought to some but how about we dont blame anyone?

I thought we were outstanding across the 80 - our defence was essentially impenetrable.

He didn't need ti touch him at all, absolute nothing kick, was as good as a pass.

So it would have been 6-4

I don’t have the energy to look at any isolated incident at the minute. Smithies penalty was silly, Hardaker I’d never back for any 50/50 kick even in a run of the mill league game against Salford, so certainly not in this game and the penalty to level the scores at 4-4 was a really really harsh call but all these things can happen (shock horror you Saints fans calling for Kendall not to get the game).

The best side won’t I felt. That’s tough to take when they were the best side by about 0.0001% but they just had enough to warrant the win.

Jeez I can’t wait to get back to watch a game against then next year. They should be pretty special again.