Why spread it wide when you have players like Swift and Dawson on the wings? Might as well form the scrum first.

There was nothing wrong tactically tonight. We did well in spells, but made so, so many mistakes and came up with some awful execution. Swift cost us a lot, Burns needs to pack in the daft kicks and LMS needs to cut out the penalties. We're hammered on penalty counts on a regular basis yet we still insist on giving the ref the ammo.

Could you enlighten us more? Both sides put enormous pressure on their opposites and the skill levels from both sides were amazing under such pressure.
Would you have preferred both teams to play 5 drives and a kick?

i cant believe kc had richards on the bench and not savelio..if it carries on he'll want a move!

To be fair, I thought the first half we did well (Swift's mistakes excepted). We built pressure, dominated the ground, and had their pack under the cosh. Forwards were running good lines and Walsh was hitting them with good ball. In fact, I thought those tactics were the right ones against Cas, because Cas's threequarters are on average significantly bigger and faster than ours, and with Webster and Shenton very strong defensive centres, Percival and Turner were never going to get much space. Maybe if we had Makinson out there, you'd have spun it out a bit more, but with Swift and Dawson, any passing move to the wings was going to end up in touch - as it did several times. We have a problem at Saints in that our backs are very small and not very fast compared to most SL teams. Only Turner has size, but he's more of a tank than a racing car, and even the smaller ones are not particularly fast, as we've seen several times this season when our lads have just been completely unable to catch up a whole range of ball-carriers even over long distances. We keep it in the forwards because that's where our relative strength is, and that works most of the time.

The loss in the second half came about because Cas's pack got back on top of our forwards. We were struggling to make yards, and their kick returns were much stronger than ours. We were quite lucky to still be in it with 5 minutes to go, particularly as our discipline was terrible. Those penalties for holding down were just stupid. Getting caught offside when you've got your opponents stuck in their twenty should be an automatic fine for the player concerned from the club management, in my view - it's just unprofessional. LMS must have given away at least 4 penalties on his own. And of course Saints had a collective brainfart of the sort I haven't seen for some time : Swift robbing the ball rather than just holding it while the carrier went into touch (I hope he's ok, but he had a shocker tonight - absolute shocker); LMS annoying the officials with his gamesmanship, which included taking a winning situation when he won the ball from the drop-out, and turning it into a losing situation by dicking about instead of playing the ball; Roby's butterfingers at the scrum; Burns's kick to gift Holmes 80 metres; Percival's completely unnecessary and obvious sin-bin-worthy flop, and so on. Properly rubbish. Cunningham needs to give them a kick up the backside.

These games happen, from time to time. As long as they don't happen too often, then it's ok. Ugly and frustrating to watch, though.

Basic errors that you dont see in junior rugby by both teams. I mean SKY bigging up Roberts and Carney i have never seen players drop as many balls as these 2 in a full 80 mins both absolutely shocking. Roby kicking out on full, knocking on at base of scrum, people feigning injury, no line breaks through great skill. Just an all round poor standard game

Good post and pretty much sums it up.

If ever there was a game that got away from us it was this one.

Quite comfortable at HT - we should have been further ahead.

Then in the second half we decide to try to defend a lead and the forwards sort of give up, Cas speeded up their game and we are gasping for air. LMS tries farting about burns tries to cheat and we lose all composure and you could just see it would end in tears.

Not enough respect for an excellent attacking opposition.

Not the best of performances, poor handling errors etc but it's a tough league. Cas are in great form. No shame in losing to a last second drop goal. Good to see Walsh & Greenwood back on the pitch. Hope Shannon & Swift are both ok.

Their backline was Roberts, Carney, Shenton, Webster and Solomona. Ours was McDonell, Swift who was having a shocker, Turner, Percy and Dawson. Our pack is our strength...why would we not keep it as a forward battle?

Not seen the game yet, it sounded as though half our back line was missing for the last 10 mins was that correct.

On the contrary - I think there's more than a bit of shame in losing to Castleord last night. In many ways it mirrored the Hull KR game - but even worse in that we had it completely under control against an opponent who posed less of a threat to our defence than we did.

Cunningham didn't give a post-match interview and I can understand exactly why. Privately he must be seething that senior players seemed to adopt a devil-may-care attitude perpetrating one stupid act after another after another. Whether it be LMS shoving over a Cas player in penalty range, or Percival giving away a senseless yellow card, or Roby (twice) having some very uncharacteristic lapses of concentraton. Take away the eight or nine separate lunatic actions, the bounce of the ball freakishly favouring our opponents (something of a trend this season) for two, perhaps even three tries - and what exactly did Cas offer other than a great deal of enthusiasm?

Perhaps it's a blessing. The players know they blew that game and if they didn't have their minds on the prize before the match they must now in its wake.

Fix the problem and move on.

I can't see them sacking Cunningham.

The only reason Cunningham's interview wasn't shown was that Sky ran out of time because of the Swift injury.

That's a bit strong. I kneejerk like the best of them and I'm not suggesting we sack the coach. Are you aware of what goes on behind the scenes? Are the players unhappy? They don't seem to be? Are things really as bad as you make out?

I'm not sure what exactly people want from Cunningham - other than winning every game from now until the end of time.

You can't really blame Cunningham for our current style of play. The squad he's working with is still very much Nathan Brown's. It's not as though he's had a great deal of opportunity to make sweeping changes.

To be honest, I think Cunningham knows one or two things some of his more illustrious colleagues at other clubs do not.

For a start, he's not abandoned the very style of play which was so successful when he first arrived and gone off on some kind of tactical wild goose chase (for no great benefit) as is currently the case with Shaun Wane. Unlike Wane he's not shouting his mouth off every five seconds whilst working his players up into a blood frenzy.

Right now we are a forward-oriented side. There's no sense denying this when it is patently obvious to anyone where our playing strengths currently lie. It would be madness to try to play like Leeds or Wigan (who are both below us in the table, I might add). We aren't set up to emulate either game plan and any attempt to do so would blow up in our faces.

Am I one hundred percent happy about everything which has happened this season? Of course not. But I think one would have to be heavily biased to think Cunningham has been anything other than a success.

I should also add - Cunningham didn't lose us that game. Senior players took their eyes off the ball and paid the price.

Thankfully there was no lack of effort (as has been the case in all our games this season - which is something you can say very rarely about Saints over an entire campaign). The problem was it was misdirected.

We should have put twenty points between us and Cas. They posed little to no threat and most of their points came from our own stupidity or a favourable bounce of the ball.

The players know they screwed up. I'm sure they'll put it right.

The horrendous injury nightmare which shows no sign of abating in the slightest isn't helping matters either. I am amazed we are still top to be honest. Other clubs would be floundering around the bottom if they had to contend with the injuries we have had/are having.

That's a good point and one which really does get to the heart of WHY Cunningham has done so well this season.

Leaving the Souths aberration to one side - our worst performance was probably the Leeds game at home. And yet EVEN THEN there was a point ten minutes after half time when we could easily have snatched that game. Leeds were getting jittery and the introduction of Walsh threatened a realistic comeback. I really am struggling to point to a single defeat this campaign where we just threw the towel in. Indeed, we could have won all of them.

Now, over the past thirty years how many Saints sides could you say THAT about at the end of the season?

We can argue about whether Cunningham has made some tactical mistakes. But there can be no questioning the team's determination, commitment and fighting spirit.

Which are precisely the kind of attributes you need to be crowned champions. Congratulations are in order for Cunningham's achievements here.

Its not all doom and gloom. Greenwood's try last night showed we can still hit those lines out wide. I'd like us to get some decent ball over to Percy as well as Turner. We did play some very entertaining stuff at times.

Realistically, we should've been further a head at HT, given the possession and position we had. The fact they were still in touching distance after being 2nd best for the first half probably buoyed Cas's confidence. Second half they bossed the speed of the game and really ate up the yards. Fair play to them.

Just seen big Sav out running in woolston.

It's not always wise to run a young player week in week out when playing in the pack. When Jammer started he would have weeks where he was rotated out to have rest periods.

Lets not forget Sav was touch and go as to whether he would ever play again at one point, so having a rest week would not be out of the question and quite frankly we had enough to win that game on Thursday. Losing it was down to many many many individual errors.

On the back of his best performance in the V the week before in Wigan v saints Derby, he should have been one of the first on the sheet. I agree that Young players and especially props needs to be eased in and protected but he picked another young prop in Richards before him.

100% sav should have played at cas.

Savelio was very good v Wigan and I was surprised when he didn't play on Thursday. Is he still wanting to leave or was that just rumour? Isn't his contract up this year? It would be a shame for Saints to lose him.

Id heard the deal has been on the table for 4 month and not been signed and that his agent had spoke to other super league club. He was suppse to be in meeting two weeks for the final chance to sign so im not sure what happened. Someone posted Hes signed it last week but I've not heard anything.

Never mind him not plsying in front of Richards, he should be in before Mose. He is a better player than mose.

Agreed on savelio. Why was he not in for the cas game ???