Being a nervous wreck on Friday evening i took it upon myself to rewatch the 2008 Grand Final, (mainly to remind myself that we were more than capable of beating St Helens and give myself a slap in the face and calm down).
In my opinion Bluey got the tactics spot on last year so much so that before last nights game i said to my sister that i thought we would sit back for the first half hour and let them batter against us. This in turn would lead them into a false sense of security and then we could turn them round and take them apart.
As long as we were no more than 2 scores down i thought we would see it through.
Sure enough St Helens came at us from the off but apart from the lucky deflection leading to Eastmonds try didn't trouble the try line much at all. (I thought we seemed very comfortable defending and kicking on the 4th fitted in well with this).
Shortly before the half hour mark Ali came on and this seemed to be the signal for Leeds to begin their attack. Sure enough on 30 mins we went in for Disko's try.
Unfortunately with Ali going off 5 minutes later it seemed to throw our plans out a bit.
Obviously we persevered and went on to win and we showed great mental strength to do that.

However after reading this and Saints forum all day it seems that the consensus of opinion is that they were totally dominant for those first 30 mins and even that they should have demolished us.

Is it not a case that we aimed to defend knowing full well that we could and would turn it round later on in the game much like last year? We certainly seemed comfortable enough when defending to me.

Apologies for the long winded post but i tend to ramble

At 8-0 I said to our lass that I was confident in that Leeds seemed to be playing a restrained game with little lateral movement and few risks in attack and a comfortable containing policy in defence; presumably with a view that as Saints blew themselves out Leeds could switch to a more open game and go on to win.

Thanks, you've just said in three lines what i tried to say in a 35000 word essay

We commented on the way out that it was almost a re-run of last years game. It was also very reminiscent of 2004 in that it was extremely tight all the way through, the kicking game, and in how the winning score came about

The early deficit lulling St Helens, the drop goal on the first attack of the second half and the drop goal at the end. Classic Leeds and John Holmes.

I knew they'd be dedicating the Championship to John's memory but didn't realise they'd copy the script of one of his greatest performances at the same time.

Nice touch.

Don't know about the tactics as a whole but thought the execution of our kicking first half was pretty average. Defended really well though to say we gave Saints field position.

I thought our kicking throughout was excellent.

I know what you mean, but there were times in the first half where we were kicking from well inside our 40 and Saints were very aggresive in defence and the kicks were coming from a deep pass. It's really hard to get the ball beyond the FB and wings under those conditions. As the Leeds forwards ground their way into the game we were kicking off good go forward and then some of our kicks were simply brilliant.

Long kicking the ball out of play so often when Leeds were under pressure seemed to be a let off. Either that or Saints didn't think they had the gas to go with us with the ball continually in play?

watch the game again and you'll notice the pitch leeds were attacking in the first half was dry and theball skidding off the surface ( long couldnt work it out). 2nd half and a watersoaked end the ball was holding up short.

Confirmed at homecoming tonight that Bluey's tactics at half time were to take a drop goal at first opportunity in second half (helped greatly by Gardner's reluctance to take the kick off)

As I've said elsewhere, I don't buy the saints dominated line.

Carney at half-time in the sky coverage hits the nail on the head, saints weren't creating chances and despite the relative possession Leeds were fairly comfortable in the first half.

For all the long range tries Leeds have scored this year, we were very good when we managed to get possession near the Saints line. From memory, in the first half there were a couple of incomplete sets (the Webb forward pass and Lee Smith's knock on) but other than that, we didn't waste many more chances near their line.

Agree it seemed Long's kicking game in the 1st half was good but 2nd half seemed to turn average at best

Leeds have shown that Sts can be 'rope-a-doped' two years running. Sts simply don't have that many points in them if the opposition stands firm.

The decision to play three wingers was a risky one but it worked.

Hall, Donald and Meli all stood up for us and played their part.

Long and Pryce were clueless in attack, they were just putting bombs up that Webb was taking all night. The odd one wasn't taken(Hall-Senior gave away penaly) but that's all they were doing, Wilkin put the kick in for their try which was very fortunate but they didn't really look like scoring many points and haven't for weeks now.

You kicked better and your bench made much more impact than ours especially Kirke and Burgess. That was the key to the game shift. That and Meli/Gardner's errors either side of HT. I might have fancied us if we led 8-4 for a bit but we didn't

You made fewer mistakes as well. Some dropping the ball in sets of 6 but nothing like the ours as mentioned above. You were deserving of the win - true I was disappointed with the Smith decision but at that stage I felt the game was slipping away already.

As for us, we seem to be more Bulls-esque than ever but we don't have the size or the finesse [even the Bulls had a bit with the Paul bros and Vanikolo to kill top quality teams when it counts.

yes, agreed.

The problem for saints is that leeds have found a way to WIN.

Underdogs or favourites they just have the knack of being able to do it.

They absorb the early onslaught from saints then hit back and saints just don't have an answer.

Saints were able to gain good metres and on many occasions penned us well in our own half but our kicking game continually turned them round.

Our kicking was immense.

The kicking has been key in all our grand final wins apart from 2007.

You need to find an alternative to that second man play with the pass behind dummy runners that hits either Pryce or Wellens chipping into the line. Teams have worked it out now.

Last year there were some bits of variety thrown into it such as hitting one of the dummy runners with a flat ball, but that seems to have disappeared and teams know they can slide to cut down the space on the outside.

Yep
I was suprised that Saints persisted with that play since it was obvious from the game at Headingley that we'd figured out how to nullify that. I was expecting a lot more variety but it never happened and that is down to either the coach or Long & Pryce

Was Pryce playing?? As opposed to just being on the pitch and wearing a shirt?

Don't forget Bailey