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.