The stat I'm worried about is: Played Wigan/Wire/Huddersfield 6(?) times, won zilch. Potter would have been lynched in the town hall square for that.

I'm starting to develop some serious doubts about Royce. Repeatedly poor (and sometimes borderline idiotic) use of the bench/interchange being the main one.

If anybody saw the pre-match build up for the wigan game, the difference between the coaches was marked. Maguire was very positive and confident in everything he said, Royce said he was nervous (which he was as he spent the next 80 minutes on TV biting his nails).

Jury very much out for me - I think he has "assistant coach" stamped all over him. Hope I'm proved wrong.

Let's be honest a hell of a lot of eye brows were raised when you found Royce. His career to date hadn't been impressive. How he got the job still mystifies me. Surely there most have been better applicants apply than him. I always remember my father telling me never to trust anyone with hooded eyes like Simmons has, OT and random I know.

As for Pryce, there a couple of times when the Wigan defensive line opened up in front of him. Yet when he tried to step through and pick up speed, he looked to have nothing. Obviously you'll have seen him a lot more than I have, has his groin injury taken away his speed and quick feet? Or is it just a case of being underdone and not truly match fit as some have suggested?

As for Wellens, your going down the exact same route we did, and Leeds are at present, being sentimental when it comes to ageing players. He's finished IMO, yet Saints don't have the ball's to say no, and it's clearly hurting the team. You'd think clubs would learn by looking at the mistakes that other clubs have made. Yet amazingly they don't, and the same mistakes are made over and over again.

I've been trying to get my head round how he works the interchanger since day one.

I'll be honest, I rated Potter at Saints. I think the only reason you've been able to cope with the amount of injuries you've had this year (again) was because of the work Potter put in with your kids.

Royce has had Perry (fair enough, injured), Shenton + LMS to last years squad. Only really lost Cunningham (who's influence was waning imo) but that allowed you to have your best player on the field for longer in Roby.

Given the staff he had at his disposal, rightly so. Although of course even the mighty Potter couldn't coach the team into winning a Grand Final. Or even getting to a Challenge Cup final. We did sneak into second place last year though, by two points on the last game so I suppose he was wonderful.


Royce said that he asked the young guys if they were nervous and he said to them that he was too, which is totally different to what you have just said. According to Twitter, Royce was shaking the hands of fans at the match, unlike his opposition coach. But I don't know whether that was beforehand or afterwards, as the tweet didn't specify that bit.


I think you were of that mindset from the outset though. I'll ask him about his interchanges at the fans forum tomorrow night. I'm sure he will have the courage to turn up following our latest defeat to Wigan (which incidentally was not his fault - he didn't drop the ball, miss tackles, be the invisible number 6 or play too laterally).

That's probably because we still had Cunningham (a seriously influential presence in our team) and Gidley (with Longy still around in the first season). Pryce was playing for most of the time Potter was here and Eastmond too. Look at what we have had to play with for the whole of this season and yet we are in third spot today.


The only young players to have regular first team spots under Potter were Foster and Dixon. Everybody else had bit parts (some hardly featured). Makinson (our present right wing) had yet to make his debut, as indeed had a number of u20s players who have played for us this season. This Potter did great with the youth mantra is seriously over done.

Potter had an ideal chance to utilise Gaskell and Lomax as Simmons has done as we were without halfbacks for the final third of the season last year, but he went with Moore and Wilkin instead, giving Gaskell all of 1.5 games.

He's doing really well with Bradford.

Pryce was not fit enough for 80 mins of RL at that intesity and pace.
Two or three games back he should have either not played him or interchanged with Gaskell in both halves. Wigan have Hock back with 3 or 4 games and he wasn't in the 17 for those very same reasons.
Under Mcguire Wigan have faced Saints seven times. Wigan have won 5, drawn one and lost one. Maybe it's more about Wigan's coach than Potter or Simmons.

I can't see anybody mentioning this but a really telling stat from Saturday was that we managed three offloads during the game and they were all from Wilkin who is not really an offloading master. We have turned into Hull KR but with better players.

It's okay praising our ball retention but it didn't lead to anything. In most Super League games ball retention leads to a win, however when you're eating at the top table you need more than that especially when you're playing against a defence that can soak up forward runs down the middle.

Who is praising our ball retention? Our ball retention was shocking.

It wasn't. We made some errors, but we pretty much completed most of our sets.

There were a minimum of eight. I might have forgotten some. Knocking on eight times, not under pressure either, is no way to win any game much less a knock-out match, especially when at least three of those knock-ons happened in attack on their line.

Saints make all those meters but just don't do enough when they get there.

I also think Wigan share the workload better than saints do.

I said at the game that Roby and Puletua were your best players. Both of them are awesome.

I don't rate Wilking but 50 tackles is fantastic.

We had a very slow start to the season, which could be attributed to a number of things. I was personally tearing my hair out and we we lost to Quins at home I threw my toys firmly out of the pram! Since then we have improved immensly, though, and the rugby's been enjoyable to watch.
We seem nervous when we play Wigan. The fact that we had all that possesion early on without scoring, only to manage two slick tries when it looked as though the game was lost, sums that up for me.
As fear the Vee said, we've a poor record against our top 3 competetors, and if we don't win on Friday I'll be mighty dissapointed, but we've seen off the next best (Leeds in particular) reasonably comprehensively.
We're behind where we could be at this point with Royce, which is a shame, but I think the longer we go through the season the closer we'll get to the best. Hopefully with a settled off season we'll hit the ground running next year (and as a bonus we'll not have an opposition team coached by McGuire) and be a true force, rather than an also ran. I do think this squad could win trophies with Royce as coach.

Pryce is class, he'll have his edge back by the end of the season so those gaps he saw he'll get through again (assuming his injury hasn't ruined him, but I'm sure it hasn't). Leon is as hard to handle as any back in the league. His mere presence with the ball cracked Catalan t'other week.

Not one will slag off Wellens excessively, as he's a club legend, but i'm afraid the ball dies when it gets to him. Against lesser defences, he gets that extra split second to make things work, but not against the top teams. He wasn't helped on Saturday by the fact we seemed to be using the same move time and time again so we weren't exactly foxing the defence, but I reckon if eastmond had been at #1 we have likely cracked you at least once in that period of territorial dominance.

It's tough with a player like Wellens - but someone needs to have the balls to drop him for the big games.

You don't get scared as an opposition fan when he tries to chime in to the line.

Its was a split discussion for posters wanting to stick with Wellens or go for Eastmond at full back (who wasn't actually available in the end). I'd plump for eastmond every time. I don't know whether he'd have taken Charnley down when Wello did, but I reckon he'd have done better for Charnley's try and I think he could have broken the deadlock in the 1st half if we'd had him attacking.

Of course he would have stopped Charnley. Charnley made a right mess of it. He should have run inside more to open up the space to go outside Wello, but he didn't, he just ran in a straight line and didn't do anything. He's not a natural winger, no in and out style in his locker. His second run was just embarassing defending.

It just shows that stats do not cover having a cutting edge and true game breakers. The stats prove that we do not need to "work harder" or "complete our sets" but actually find a way to open a defense with a single play.

We need to let go of our safety blanket Wello and get an extra playmaker on the field.

We did need to work harder - than the previous time we met Wigan (Stobart). But Pryce let us down badly on Saturday and so did Wellens. Between them they created a series of errors, which was very disappointing given the dominance of our forwards (the thing we had lacked last time we met the goons).

If we manage to put together the hard work in the forwards AND creativity in the halves/fullback, we will beat Wigan. We have the right game plan; we just need the execution to take our chances when they appear.

Nail on the head. Our pack did their job, and the likes of Martyn/Long would have had a field day in the first half. The platform was there for all to see.

Sorry but I think that's unfair and copmplete bandwaggon jumping. The tackle he made on Charnley was full back play of the highest order. If the rest of our defence had got back as quickly and covered as well as he did we wouldn't have conceded that try. People are saying what a great game Meli had but he was the person who was asleep when Charnley went through that gap.

Agree on the first point however I think you have to give Charnley credit for a great step which beat both Meli and the cover. The pointsl remain about Wellens though i.e. his lack of pace means the ball dies with him whenever we're in a situation where some speed is required which is either linking up on the outside or returning the kick. He's still great powering through tackles but it's not enough anymore.

The thing with Wello is that the game has moved on. Fullbacks are no longer the RL equivalent of a goalkeeper in footballer. They are not there purely to take down defenders that break through. They are now a third halfback, like the looseforward is now a third prop. The fullback is now arguably the most important attacking weapon in a side as it's much harder to defend against their linking into the line. We just don't have that in our nal with Wellens in the side, he's too slow and far too predictable and doesn't contribute enough and leaves us looking helpless in attack because we've got 12 blokes in a line and no threat from fullback.

Even if the development of the sport hadn't changed the role of the fullback, Wello still isn't playing well enough to stay in the team. The tackle on Charnley in the first half was magnificent, but he used to do that week in week out a few years ago. He's missing more tackles than ever now and for 99% of the tries we concede he arrives in the area just as the player is touching the ball down. He's also not the safe pair of hands he used to be under the bomb, he's dropped more clangers this season than he has in his entire career.

It's hard for Saints fans because it's Wello. A local product who has given his all for the club and who has produced some sensational performances and seasons for us in the past. I love the man, love him to bits. But if he was any other player in any other position he would be booed and he would be the scapegoat for our woes this season.

For the sake of the team he has to go. He cannot be the first choice fullback next season.

I was told from a very reliable source that he asked to move to 13 at the start of either last season or the season before. May be this time....

Under Royston's back on the bench policy he's absolutely perfect. Wello could cover 1,3,4,6,7,9,11,12,13 allowing us to have 3 bruisers on the bench.

But the club hasn't shown any hints so far that he will be moved or replaced at fullback.

I think he'd be a waste of a spot on the bench. He'd come on and make no impact at all. We want a sub that will make a difference and IMO wello wouldn't.