Last 30 mins he didn’t have a lot of ball and in general I thought it was our worst spell of the season as a team in quite a few ways, even taking in to account the late comeback. The failure of Toulouse to set up properly for a number of drop goal shouts was astonishing. We just kept giving them the ball back for another go.

All in all on Harry Smith he’s made 3 poor errors in the game and they’ve overshadowed some really positive stuff and it’s his first team career summed up in one game tbh. I still have confidence that the error count can go down, as the positive inputs go up and you’re left with the player we all thought he could be a couple of years ago. He needs to make it happen though.

EDIT - Wrong thread.

Looked like the classic thought we could score off every play switched off and couldn't quite get a grip again. I will take the 2 points and hope it's a lesson learned. I also thought Toulouse seemed to get the bounce of the ball and was just getting all the possession due to the way we was playing. The Smith error was a massive swing in momentum spot on.

I'll disagree ever so slightly NK. I don't think he did make 3 poor errors. He made 1 (the pass to touch) but even then it was because the ball slipped from his grasp. Not great but it happens. The other 2, whilst technicarlly errors, were not entirely his fault. The intercept was a good read from Gigot that, had one of our players done it, we'd quite rightly be crediting the player for. The 2nd was a decision to run the ball instead of kicking on the last. Faz completely switches off and drops the ball as a result. Had Faz caught it we could well be waxing lyrical about his willingness to play what's in front of him. That said, I do think he needs to realise that his strength is his kicking game, which was excellent on Saturday. So perhaps look to kick and control rather than trying the flashy plays, at least until he has more game time under his belt.

On the other side of the coin, everything else he did all night was pure quality. He had a hand (or boot) in virtually everything good we did and defended really well too.

Defensively poor. At times very poor. Every game so far this season we have let in at least one soft try. Not good enough if we want to win trophies.
Too slow at ptb. It’s my biggest criticism. At times I thought Lam was back in charge.
Why put Shorrocks at hooker????
I’m not anti Shorrocks but if he’s a hooker I can whup Tyson Fury. It’s seems he was due a game so we’ll fit him in hooker. For me a bizarre selection by Peet. Didn’t time it but Mago I think did about 20 minutes - hopefully they are saving him for Catalans.
Positives - l believe last year we would have lost that. Hardaker’s difficult conversions effectively gave a chance to snatch a win that at one point looked beyond us. We carried on trying to play some rugby. No one man rugby but gave the ball some air at every opportunity even when 12 points down. Field.
Players mixing with the fans in the bar after the game.

A great trip but very disappointed with our performance. If we learn from it fine if it’s a kick up the Harris we probably need then even better. Obviously everyone happy we won when we played poorly at times but I’d be pretty surprised if Toulouse keep any other team within a point this season.

Last 2 games our pack has been second best

Defence was the big negative for sure Itchy. Very soft from players we know are good defenders such as Faz and Smithies. A defensive performance to forget.

I thought Shorrocks went Ok tbh although I think he only played hooker because Powell went off. If not, and they intended to play him there, then O'Neil should have had the opportunity instead.

I thought there was the first coaching error of the season too. Moving so many players out of position to accommodate the changes of personnel was a mistake. It effectively neutralised some of the combinations that have looked good over the first 3 games.

Lessons to be learned all round.

Not watched the highlights but I think Shorrocks charged down a kick late on and collected the rebound to set us up so not calling the lad but hooker is now probably the key position for the best teams. You can’t have a make do player at hooker it just doesn’t work. I think the call was Shorrocks or O’Neil for the bench and Peet got it wrong. With Catalan on the horizon I’d find it difficult to believe that the plan was to play Powell for the 80 against a very average Toulouse outfit.

After last year if someone said we’d be 4 from 4 I’d have snatched their hands off so trying not to be hyper critical but defensively we don’t look great at times which is a bit of a surprise.
I think Field is covering a few cracks which to be fair isn’t surprising because last year we were truly awful so we are improving but still very much work in progress.

The positive was we kept on trying to play rugby and to be fair when we got the chances late on we took them so fair do’s but Saints will put at least 50 on Toulouse unless they play a raft of youngsters
Maybe at 10 nil I got complacent along with the players so hopefully lessons learned all round

There was definitely a "Sheffield in the CC final" feel to it. The early tries probably contributed to it too as it all seemed too easy. Unfortunately, once you take your foot off the gas, it's often difficult to get motoring again (somewhat laboured vehicular analogy there but you get the point! Haha).

As you say, it's still a work in progress and the odd stutter here and there is to be expected. It's how we're going come September that really matters. The fact that we took 2 ponts away from a below par performance is a bonus.

Is Powell injured ? Might have to be a Shorrocks and O’Neill combo against Catalans.

I can certainly go with that one on the Farrell pass. I must admit I did think it was a 50/50 that one and there certainly was some switching off on Farrell’s part. I suppose we can’t on one hand demand attacking rugby and then on the other hand rip players apart when they try to enforce that.

I’m probably guilty of focusing on the commentators comments on those errors. I thought Joe Mills in particular was pretty harsh on him tbh and did put a huge focus on the errors. Two examples of that focus was him being criticised in the second half for giving a ball to Jai Field on the left hand side, who stuttered, stopped and was tackled on the spot. I’m not sure why but that was apparently Smiths fault and then after the hooter it was of a case of ‘well he’s got the winning drop goal but he’s had a really poor game’ and I’m with you, I thought there was more good than bad. The lad got ripped apart on the other board based solely on that commentary after the game.

You’d think he must’ve got a knock with not playing any of the second half. I thought I’d heard it was a head knock somewhere but could be dreaming.

The time has to come for Brad O’Neill soon, especially if Powell is out on Saturday. Give the lad a start IMO if that is the case. He looks a terrific talent and has been playing Championship rugby to get ready. At worst I’d have him on the bench Saturday, even if Powell is fit.

Not surprised really

I agree that the commentary has a lot to answer for. It lead me to believe I was in for a horror show when I watched the match but, in truth, it was quite the opposite. I thought Smith was excellent in places. The two kicks to force repeat sets in the second half were perfect and something we as fans have often called for. The calmness with which he set up and took the drop goal to win the match was exemplary and something Gigot was unable to do. Gigot quite rightly got many plaudits on the night. Smith not so much. His kick for the Cust try was a beaut and put panic in the defense. He linked well for the Marshall try. Importantly, if he's covering for Tommy, he put himself about in defense.

I'm not claiming he's the finished article or that he was perfect in that game. However, the level of stick he's taking for what was essentially a good performance, is painting the wrong picture of what actually happened. As you say, I think much of it is coming from people who haven't even seen the match.

I was in the pub with a mate watching the football on Saturday and he had the commentary on in one ear and was relaying bits and bobs to me. He just kept saying ‘they’re saying Smith is having a shocker’, so when I saw the try’s later that night we messaged each other and went ‘he looked good on the highlights weirdly but let’s watch the full game’ and then as we say, he made one or two mistakes but in the main had a pretty good game.

He does need to cut back on the errors but by the same token he needs people to stop looking to crucify him. If we look at Jai Field’s performance on Saturday he scores two absolute belters but he himself threw a couple of dodgy passes. That’s fine, it’s to be expected now and again but they don’t get a mention. There’s no issue with that, he’s been sensational but it just highlights how everyone comes up with good and bad moments in a game. Look at somebody like Johnny Lomax, he makes rafts of errors but it probably considered the leagues best halfback at the minute (by some).

There’s work to do by Smith for sure but I’d like to see a bit more positivity around him, especially from guys like Joe Mills, who will influence peoples opinions on a player.

I think it's quite strange how some players have the focus on the good things they do and others the focus is on the bad things they do.

Obviously with Smith there is some hangover from last season, but I think very unfair to judge him on last season and we should be starting with a clean slate.

if you look at his positive involvements in the game he was very influential in a number of key moments, bust he seems to have attracted mostly criticism.

Compare for example with Williams when playing for Canberra, he spent most of the games I saw playing 2nd fiddle to Wighton their number 6, and anonymous for most of the game, but he injected himself in less than a handful of moments each game -mostly attacking kicks, and he received rave reviews from everyone. He didn't make a many errors though, but if we look at when George was here he got slated for trying to do too much -and many people ignored his positive contributions.