I've been a big josh perry fan for years as I'm a NRL fan and I've backed perry big time over the past 12 month but I've got to admit, he don't look half the player he was. It looks like the injuries he's had over the past month and possibly his age have caught up with him.

Must agree with you on Perry(average), but your opinion of Laffranchi is way off the mark.Took the ball up (one handling error)tackle rate was good,scored an excellent try,all in all,first class performance,Only thing wrong was he wasn't on for long enough spells. Certainly well above average.

Look again Rogues,

I think if you watched the game again without the "I desperately hope Saints new signings are rubbish" specs, your opinion of Laffranchi would change.

He'll be a quality addition to our squad.

Perry makes Britt look speedy

Think Perry needs to play every week to get his fitness up. Same for TP at the moment, so next week it will be either clough or La frank who gets a rest.

Wow nice to be able to say that rather than, who is gonna play next week with all these injuries???

And of course speed is what we all look for in a prop.

It's not what people look at in a prop but props need to be able to move faster than what perry is at the moment. He practically stopped before he gets going. Possibly down to no game time but only time will tell.

Thought Perry looked good last night, would like to see longer stints from him though, seems like he's never on the field for longer than 10-15 mins.

Why on earth would we have needed more pre-season games? 1 is now way too many frankly. We have another 25 of them still to go this season to ease players into fitness and form before we hit any competitive games - I think that's plenty.

Looks overweight to me. It probably goes along way to explaining why he's so slow and lethargic. Plenty more first team action should work the chub off him, then he'll settle down.

I thought you didn't watch our match on Friday night?

If you watch him against hull kr, he does a lot of unneeded running that obviously makes him tired. In defence he's running all over the place like headless chicken and chases every little half break.

It's good to see him do this but he needs to just keep his kind and save his energy.

My thoughts exactly when he loses a bit of middle timber gets more match fit then he will return to something like his normal self with confidence.
He,s never going to Be a Graham with loads of carries and metres, Perry,s forte is a good off load in heavy traffic, hopefully we will see that sooner than later.
If he suffers no injuries I,m expecting him to be good value by Easter.

What's that got to do with anything?

If you don't watch Saints how can you judge whether they needed another pre-season game?

We were worse last season when we would go in at halftime nilled on more than one occasion and yet we had more pre-season friendlies last season.

I'm with Royce. He thought we needed a longer break because of the pressure of last season with injuries and the like. I think we have done well so far this season. We have scored in the first half, we have listened to the coach in the second, we have won our first two matches - when did we last do that? - and we are improving. Our big issue is the forwards and whether they are going to man up consistently or whether they are going to be lazy.

I think we have been "lucky" so far in our opening games in that we have not met any team with obvious form like Wigan, Warrington and London last year. Think our yardstick might be Catalans in a couple of weeks, we need Tony P, Perry, LMS and Franki to up there game by then.

Totally agree

At the match I thought he was average, but when I watched it again on sky I didnt think he did to bad. Give him time

I agree with that to a point, but also it's possible Royce looked at the fixture list, (potential at that point) and thought we can build up through the opening games rather than have a front loaded pre-season. I was worried after hearing about Widnes that we lacked pre-season. But after Salford we are not a million miles off and for me the front row is just a bit unfit at the moment, from lack of pre-season.

Had our first 4 games been Leeds, Wigan, Warrington, Catalan then Royce may have said we need to be 100% on day one. As it is fitness can be built up through our first 3 or 4 games.

Perry was blowing and moving slow, but he was still also offloading in heavy traffic and we need our backs and Roby to be ready to run off that. TP too had some good runs but could not get his arms loose.

I've read what Pete has said about Perry being an NRL SOO player when he came to us. There is one thing that is true quality lasts, so if its just about his fitness levels, they can be recovered with effort and game time. Would hope TP and Perry play week in and week out as they both need the games and the other props are rotated for now. TP and Perry can have a week off on rotation when they are running at max.

I know we don't need any more pre-season games because we already have to plough through 27 of the damn things every year... How many warm up games do you think we need exactly?

It's becoming a bit tiresome reading you write this on every single thread. Leeds winning from 5th was a freak occurrence that has happened once in the entirety of Super League. I'm also willing to say it won't happen again for a long time to come. If anything it's a good thing, showing our league has plenty of competition and is getting closer in terms of talent.

It's a hell of a lot less tiresome than having to sit through 27 hollow, meaningless friendlies every season now... [iYou [/imight not see it as an issue or a problem that our favourite sport is becoming a shallow, emotionless shell, or that the vast majority of games played by my beloved Saints are utterly, utterly meaningless and incapable of sparking any excitement in me (or apparently the many silent thousands at the wake on Friday) at all, but I flippin' well do pal...

And I can't be mythered arguing the ridiculous point [iagain[/i that Leeds winning from 5th was a one-off freak occurrence (it wasn't), that it will never possibly happen again in our lifetimes (it will, frequently), that finishing 1st/2nd grant teams a massive advantage in the playoffs anymore (it simply does no such thing, demonstrably), and that playing hard all season to try to achieve a high league placing is of any benefit (it clearly is not and is self defeating). The "entire history of superleague" is 2 seasons under the "It's a Knockout" system we now labour under as including results from the Top 5 era (when league position indeed did matter a very great deal to a team's playoff chances) in any analysis is a nonsense. A basic statistical analysis of representative "history" so far proves that teams finishing in the top 2 make the final only 50% of the time. Just read my other posts (as you already seem to have done) to put yourself straight on the subject and save me the bother, eh?

Anyway, I'm off to Stadium:MK to renew my season ticket there tomorrow and then off up to the smoke on Tuesday to see them play yet another meaningful, important, tense, exciting league game, the result of which will have a strong bearing on the outcome of their season. I mourn bitterly for the long lost days when I could regularly do the same at Saints games and never in a million years ever considered going to the inferior spectacle of football instead. Sadly I just can't self-delude to the same extent that you, Eddie and Stevo can... At least they get paid for doing it though...

It's true, games against Salford were a cacophony of noise before the play-offs were introduced, absolute pandemonium at KR when Salford came to town.

That's how I remember it.

What are you doing posting on here? You do know we won?

Oh, and I am moving to Prestwich soon. Want to watch the matches together? I think it would be amazing!