Well, we'd best just hand you the title right now. There's really no point in the rest of SL turning up. Have you considered re-mortgaging your house and putting it on a Leeds title?

I'm sure you'll make a killing.

So we either win the title next season, or Peacock retiring has heavily weakened us? No middle ground then?

If JP stays injury free, the title must be ours this season then based on that retarded logic.

I sense you are a bit of a WUM so I am going to bow out. Night.

Anyhoo - I can only take so much doom, despair and doubt.

It's like the final days of Jonestown in here right now. Time for me to flee the camp before you all start guzzling the Kool-aid.

I must say, I was very impressed by Stevie Ward tonight. He's a tough little bugger.

useless
ˈjuːsləs/
adjective
not fulfilling or not expected to achieve the intended purpose or desired outcome.
"a piece of useless knowledge"
incompetent, ineffective, worthless, ineffectual, incapable, inept, inadequate, hopeless, weak, bad, no good, Mose Masoe.

Please stop defending this lad. Clare Balding could run it in harder and more often. You've got Jamie Peacock, 37 years old, showing Mose up for the lazy, waste of bench space that he is.

I can tolerate being outclassed (which we was), but I can't be doing with lack of effort. As soon as he starts putting a shift in I'll stop calling him. Forget about injuries, we're playing with 16 players every single week.

I'm gutted about the defeat, but as soon as I saw our back line I knew we were in for a tough night. Makinson should be on the wing, makes no sense to weaken two positions instead of one. Stick an academy kid at full back and let him learn the ropes. Wane isn't afraid to chuck the kids in.

Anyway, fine margins tonight. There's a lot of improvement in us and I'm sure we'll be just fine.

Really? That's exactly what it looked like to me. Our defence was probably the worst I've ever seen.

Mind you I stopped watching before half time and decided to stick hot needles into my eyeballs instead which turned out to be much less painful than watching saints.

Another excuse being made for Mose. Shouldnt a experninced NRL international prop be able to get himself up for the game? Why should KC have to get him up for it ?

It's pretty clear he was one of them kids who was bigger than everyone else growing up and was probably running thru teams all thru his youth. As the other players have grown and improved he still just counts on his size and I imagine year upon year he got worse and worse but got by as he's huge.

He's so overweight and unfit it's embarrassing for a pro. He looks like a big fat pudding of a player.

And we also have Thompson and Sav who are on a learning curve and that's why I keep banging on about us needing a prop NOW!

We can't keep asking walmsley to run himself into the ground like we are doing. As stated Amor is in a dip of form at the moment (still works his socks off) so we are then left with the 8 min wonder in mose and im 100% we can't count on him.

Vea being out puts more pressure on Amor and Walmsley as he puts in a good 80min shift and takes the work load off walmsley and Amor.

I agree about Amor but I thought he had his best game of the season last night.

He did. The thing with amour he still works his socks off and you knock him for that. The effort and heart is always there but we need another prop and need him now.

No we don't. You keep repeating that Amor is having "a dip in form" but he's not. Look at his stars and you see a strong performance even in defeat last night. Certainly no worse than other forwards. Amor does his job, providing solid tackling and usually requires 3 defenders to pull him down, tiring the defence. He also provides genuine aggression where Saints have often been lacking in that regard. This claim about his form has become a reflex, but I see no evidence to support it.

We have Amor, Walmsley, Savelio, Richards, Masoe, Thompson, Vea and LMS who can all play prop. That's easily comparable in quantity and quality to the prop rosters of Leeds, Wigan or Wire: 4 experienced international standard guys and some understudies.

The very effectiveness of this shows in the fact that we've not lost a forward battle all year. Even last night our forwards matched Leeds fairly comfortably. So getting yet another prop would be using scarce resources for marginal gains.

We certainly need an effective reserve hooker before we destroy Roby completely. Obviously Cunningham doesn't think Hohaia can do that job, so we need to fill that gap urgently. But IMO by far our greatest need is a genuine attacking threat in the back 5. Every one of Leeds' or Wigan's back five offers a greater threat than any of ours. What's more, both Wigan and Leeds had backs not playing who would still be the best threequarter/fb in our side : Hall, Charnley, Bowen, Briscoe would all be automatic picks for us too. The best I can say about our back five is that they'll get more chances now Wals is back, but I can't really picture any of them - even with Walsh - offering the same attacking threat as any of the Wigan or Leeds backs.

So no, we don't need another prop. It's probably the position in which we are strongest, along with second row. We need a hooker, and we need an attacking back.

Hang on a minute! I'm not bagging Amor at all! In fact I'm praising him as I said, he's having a little dip but works his socks off and never stops!

We DO need a prop. Richards is 19 and having a littke 2nd season syndrome which is to be expected at that age. Thompson is 19 and again we can't ask to much of him and Sav has struggled but had his best game last night. Those 3 young props could be very very good props but we can't ask to much of 19 year old lads!

That leaves us with Alex and mose. Big Alex Imo is the best prop so far this season in super league.

I'm not even going to waste my time on mose as he's just a complete waste of space.

Completly agree another prop would be a luxury we dont need. We're crying out for a international outside back. Imagine Watkins running onto them Walsh passes last night. Instead we have the likes of Flanagan and Jones killing our attacks as soon as they get the ball.

That makes it sound like you're living in the past.

His stats last night were ok. His stats against Hull were exceedingly poor.

He missed SEVEN tackles (by comparison Mose missed two). His total number of drives wasn't up to his usual standard either. He looks a bit short of weight. Maybe the club worked him hard in the off-season. Maybe he picked up a virus. Whatever - it has affected his form, somewhat.

I accept that all players have off games (quite a few had an off game last night). But there's a difference between a bad game and being permanently/temporarily off-form. I think Amor suffers slightly because he's always directly compared to Walmsley, who until last night was playing very well indeed, and also Walmsley's game I based around big carries and yardage which get the crowd up. But if you compare Amor's stats to the rest of the pack, then - Hull game excepted - I don't see that he's performing consistently worse. Indeed, on occasions like last night, he was, along with LMS, our standout forward.

Anyway, bottom line is that I disagree with St Pete - we don't need a prop. We have much higher priorities in other positions.

It's not just a prop we need but Imo as mose is waste of space and 3 of them are 19 so we need to help Alex out.

The thing about Amor is - he's been absolutely outstanding pretty much ever since he arrived. Aside from coming back from injury I've always considered him our stand-out prop. Above even Walmsley. I agree that's he's not playing badly. But he's not playing at his best, either.



I agree entirely. I mean, when you look at Wigan's front row stats against Leeds (where Mossop & Clubb didn't make ten carries put together in the entire match!), or Warrington's disintegration - not to mention Catalans (who I thought were the roughest lot we faced toward the end of last season) it's plain daft to think we need any more grunt than we already possess.

Indeed, once we shook off day-dreaming at the start of the second half last night we didn't seem to have any problems making easy yards against Leeds' pack.

Our problem is we don't have an awful lot of cover in the backs. A few injuries and we're scrambling around trying to patch holes. As I said earlier, we perhaps should have promoted one of the more promising juniors to a bench position at the beginning of the campaign. But we didn't. And there's nothing we can do about it now.

All this griping and moaning about "lacking pace" and "penetration" is pure garbage. For all his critics - Turner's been the league's most potent finisher this season. We know Percy has plenty of quality. I can't BELIEVE people are criticising Makinson. And Swift played an absolute blinder against Wigan's supposed "wonder backs" (who we squashed flat - again).

Couple this with the return of Walsh - who people seem to have forgotten about. And let's not forget this is a proven partnership with Burns.

There's so much to look forward to this season. And yet the same crop of whiners are throwing their hands up and surrendering before we've even got anywhere near our stride!

Pitiful. The lads deserve better than this sorry lot.

Your obsessed with other teams and their forwards. Your also obsessed with stats. I bet our packs stats isn't up there as the best pack in super league as you state regular.

Who has surrended ? I've not seen one post on here saying we can't win something. I think we can but also wouldn't suprise me if we crash and burn into nothing.

We've won one game in the last 5 games which isn't exactly setting the league on fire at the moment. The losses have been against a poor hull KR and hull team and agsinst two of the best in the comp which will always be 50/50 games.

The only "obsessed" individual here is you. It's not me running around with your name in my sig. It's not me pleading with other board admins to "ban him" (comical!). I did say we have the best pack in the league - both at the end of last season and the beginning of this. But it's YOU whose seemingly on a mission to keep reminding everyone that I said it. Just as it's YOU bashing Mose every third post.

As for being "obsessed" with other teams - we'll d'uh! You think Keiron Cunningham gives a fig about not being the best team in the world - providing he has the best team in SL?

As for stats - it's YOU who keeps linking to them every five minutes. Not me.

Like most delusional types you are in the habit of projecting your own failings onto others and them damning them for such. Couple this with not being very bright and it's a double-whammy of balderdash served up with fries and a coke.

I do think the doom and gloom is getting a little bit ahead of itself on here. Last night was disappointing and our defence was worryingly woeful, but it's also easy to forget that the interception tries at both ends of the first half were real killers and 12 point turn-arounds. Take one of them and we have a different game on our hands (we'd either be off to a great start or getting right back into it on the stroke of half time). Take them both and we very well could have won. Add on top of that the amount of field position we gifted them with unforced errors, and the penalty on half way that we forfeited into an attacking position for Leeds when Fleming made that mistake from the kick off.

I agree that Leeds looked a lot better than us in that first half, but to put it in perspective, it could have easily been very different. I'm confident we'll be in with a good shout of winning the title again at the end of the season, although Leeds will indeed take some stopping as their backline is ridiculous.

The thing is - far too many people have forgotten what a fit Luke Walsh gives us.

With Walsh up to full fitness and a little luck with injuries and there's nothing to worry about. Nothing.

Other teams have far, far bigger issues to contend with than us. Leeds are welcome to their success. But from experience I'd be wary about being the best team in the league [iat the wrong time of the competition.[/i

Mugwump, why do you have to revert to personal insults? There's been a few references today to what you perceive to be a lack of intelligence with other posters. You're coming across as snobby, mate.

In my experience the council of fools is all the more dangerous the more of them there are.

If that makes me a "snob" - fine. I can live with it.

This is a public message board - not a pacifists convention. If you make a demonstrably stupid contribution don't wail if people call such out for what it is.

Take a rest and get some sleep.