Even though Savelio starred at Widnes he wasn't on the field for a lot of minutes, I think to play him at Leeds would have been a mistake. Much better idea to play him and Percival against London.

Big test for brown this weekend, he threw the game against widnes in favour of this one, he has to show he made the right decision by getting the team up for this. Another lack lustre performance like the last few weeks will raise questions about his coaching. A return to the great rugby of a few weeks ago will signal him as a top coach

Lomax
Makinson
Turner
Jones
Swift
Hohaia
Walsh
Amor
Roby
Walmsley
Wilkin
Soliola
LMS

Masoe
Richards
Wellens
Greenwood

Or we could look at the year as a whole??

That's far too even handed and logical for this forum.

If we win, they should all be knighted! If we lose, SACK EM ALL!!!!

I get the point I really do. If it is lack luster then it will raise questions, but this game is as tough as they come and if we do lose. I hope we don't go and chuck the baby out with the bath water.

There are lots of reasons to be positive this year. But since Easter there has been a little bit too much micro inspection.

I want a win against Leeds as the Cup is a great competition to win and a sign of a springboard back to success. However, it's far from a gimme game so there will be an element of a decent performance showing some balance.

For example one of Wigan or Leeds is going to lose again as they have to play each other twice in May. As do Leeds and Cas.

So we have just been through our 'toughest' run, we now have a period where we can move up the league or put some distance from those around us. By playing 'weaker' teams.

Good luck from all at Cas Tigers.
Hope you smash 'em.

If we play well and lose it's not too big a deal. If we play as poorly as in the derby, and as againts Widnes, Cas, Huddersfield and Wakefield questions need to be asked.

The season started positively with a superb performance at Warrington but has been sliding downhill since then. Results held up, somewhat miraculously, up to the Wigan game. We could easily be on a five or six game losing run now. IMO the results and some 20 minute periods of superb performance have masked some very ordinary performances this season.

I was not of the same optimism coming into the season as most. A lot thought trophies were possible. I think the weekend will prove if that is the case. Another defeat and it's 0 from 2 in the meaningful games against the big boys and makes winning the GF seem a step too far. It's important though that we give it a go this season and try to build momentum. I'm still not convinced about Brown, the weekend will tell us a lot more.

It's easy to say judge someone come the end of the season but Rugby doesnt work that way. If we lose on saturday 50% of the season has just evaporated for us. Nobody really cares who finishes top unless it's part of a double or treble so that leaves us a GF to play for with a team running on 1 halfback , 1 hooker (who is alleged to be injured) and a set of forwards who look decent until the going gets tough (which it will on the way to a GF)

IMO the root cause of the inconsistent form lies with inconsistent selection

Stand off - Turner wheeler Lance Wello Wilkin

Six ( may be more ) half back combinations

Over rotation of young forwards - Walker, Greenwood, Richards, Thompson, Savelio sometimes
At the expense of more experienced players such as Lafranchi Flanagan ( okee cokee - in out in out shake em all about)


Josh Jones ? Centre or Back Row - make your mind up
Starting Prop ? Walmsley or Mose - make your mind up
Lance - Stand Off Fri then FB on mon - make your mind up

How are players supposed to feel confident with all combinations both offensively and defensively when you don't know who is stood next to you week in week out. We had consistency up to HKR at home due to no injuries. Once we had a few injuries NB thinks he's some selection wizard instead of keeping square pegs in square holes etc...


NB needs to get back to basics decide on his best team and stick with it for a period of games - if we get an injury then change like for like , don't shuffle the whole pack. We've got as good a squad as any team in the league -The spotlight is on NB for me.

No, no he doesn't. We need to do that from late august until the end of the year. The only thing we need to do right now is:

a) stay in the cup for as long as possible; and
b) rack up as many league points as possible for doing as little as possible

I think after the good start, and poor Easter, people have lost sight that playing well consistently now. You win nothing for that. Were ahead of where we were last year, and we've seen vast improvements on what we can do. We'll see where we are in september

August is Far too late to be trying to fix things up - we have to go to Wigan Leeds Hudds Both Hull clubs and Catalan in the league. Where do you think we will finish if we keep faffing about week to week.

No worse than where we did last year - except with better tools for the playoffs.

Walsh and Amor into the team that lost to Leeds in the playoffs would of won last year, then who knows.

We will do a lot better this year in the amount of winning games. I think people forget Saints have had a tough campaign over this first third of the season and have won 9 out of 11 games.

The contenders in Leeds, Castleford and Wigan are all going into a tough period after next week all of them playing each other turning them into 4 pointers.

In our next 12 fixtures we play London and Bradford twice home and away and a home game against Castleford. I expect to see Saints topping the table in Mid May.
But at the moment we can forget this until the result tomorrow.

Wigan purposefully rotated people in and out last year and almost manufactured a bad run to be ready for the business end of the season.

Yet we want to be running at 100% in May???

Next year we will need to be at 100% in May due to the split and the CC proposed changes.

At the moment we should be looking at are we improved on last year?
Yes by some margin - I go into games expecting to win.
There are only 3 games where my expectation was not a result.

Wigan Leeds and Widnes.

I expected us to lose to Widnes as soon as the draw was made (widnes have not been playing badly at all and we where always going to change the whole team)

Leeds I expected a loss we got a win
Wigan I thought we would win but we underperformed by some margin.

So I get one over performance, one under performance.

It's all about expectations. At the moment Saints are meeting mine. Others seem to be expecting results more like the 2006 season. I was never expecting that.

Brown is known for tinkering with team selections but I do think he should keep the spine of your team as far as he can bar injuries.
Surely he should be maintaining - Lomax, Hohaia, Walsh, Wilkin and Roby?
Wilkin at 13 due to Manu being out for some weeks.
The Cup Tie at Leeds is so important for your season and a win there would mean Easter is soon forgotten.

Jesus, we've lost one game proper, and one by resting half the first team before a cup game, lets get a little perspective.
We're 1 point off top in the league.
By this time tomorrow we could be joint favourites for the cup (with Wigan)

oh, and our 2 main rivals (leeds and wigan) play each other twice in May so they'll be dropping points soon

Whilst we play London and Bradford.

Precisely. We've played Cas, Leeds, Hudds, Wigan and Wire and dropped 2 points against them , not too shabby

I have a strong feeling Saints will come out of tomorrow's game with a fine win. From what I can gather Leeds have played near enough there strongest side in both Easter Fixtures. Could that decision backfire on McDermott (tiredness could be a serious problem for them tomorrow) Nathan Brown could really have pulled off a masterstroke by resting those players that didn't play on Easter Monday as they will be fresh to a certain extent.

Below is the mini "big 5" league so far... (It unfortunately doesn't account for in form teams we've also had to face, like cas and widnes, or the cup game) ...

[size=100[code
Saints 2 0 1 +15 4
Wigan 2 0 1 +11 4
Leeds 1 1 1 +2 3
Huddersfield 1 1 1 -3 3
Warrington 1 0 3 -25 2

[/code[/size

learnt how to do tables have we

it's an interesting table as well

How did you get the columns to align properly? I can't figure it out. Kind of embarrassing seeing as I'm supposed to be proficient in C, C++ and Javascript...