Yeah i fully agree we needed this game to take us forward. More battle hardened for the next fight.
Bit concerned with Duftys knee, he clearly hurt it, hope it was just a stinger and not like last time when he played the rest of the game and made it worse.

My original post was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek as a pee-take on Saints, but it seems to have turned into a useful constructive criticism thread!

The impressive thing is, that looking at those two teams on paper at the start of this season, any RL fan/pundit would be championing the amount of World Class Saints players on the field, and how Warrington would have to play their absolute best game of the season to win it.

We didn't play that well, in the end. But this Burgess team can play at C+ and still hang in there and sneak a win when it counts. This is the sort of performance that Saints or Wigan would be capable of against us when it counted in years gone by. Seems we are now able to match that.

As you say, what's not to like? It almost feels better to put Saints out with an average performance when they were at their best!

Sorry SC but you are behind the times. Saints fans have had more fits of the vapours in the last 2 seasons than my Aunt Fanny , and she is flakier than a field full of flakes in flake county.

I suppose my only criticism from yesterday (apart from 6th tackle kicks) is that we looked (from a spectators POV) to be out-powered in the front row forwards, especially in the first half, although the yardage stats look similar for both teams. Can't fault the efforts of Philbin and Yates as 'smaller' front rowers but wonder whether Harrison, and more so, Vaughan and Musgrove didn't deliver their normal impact. Against KR on Friday, or Wigan if we play well enough to win on Friday, we'll need a significant uplift from the front row. And I'm not talking about effort, there's no criticism in that department, but rather impact and energy from our big men. We know they can do it so they collectively need to deliver their biggest performance of the season Friday night.

thought Philbin was immense.... and was absolutely key to the win...putting pressure on the kicker that led to out on the full and the williams drop goal.

I think we desperately need an ‘on it’ Philbin. Other than Walker we’ve lacked a bit of oomph from the bench at times.

In fairness to Vaughan it was his first game for a month. You can be as fit as you can but nothing beats match fitness

Interesting to see who SB chooses as starting props on Friday. I would not be surprised to see Vaughn start with either Harrison or Musgrove, and whoever doesn't make that call will be on the bench with Philbin. Slowing down HKR's go forward and neutralising Lewis and May, I'm sure will be areas of focus.

It'll be vaughan and yates. I've goy a sneaking feeling musgrove picked up an injury, that could be the only reason he didn't get brought back on

[quote="Kevin Turvey"]I suppose my only criticism from yesterday (apart from 6th tackle kicks).

Thought this all season about are 6th tackle kicks. A few weeks ago I came to the conclusion it’s not the kicking but an actual tactic.
With Burgess spending majority of his career in NRL, he his more adamant to get maximum distance on the kicks from our half and the defence move up in a straight line quickly to defend strongly and hopefully force a mistake. Attacking kicks up and under and grubber kicks I’m sure are only allowed when we are deep in opposition 40.