Wigan 10 Cats 42

Wigan 16 - 46 Catalans

Jamie Foster spills the ball from a Crusaders kick giving them great territory. Luckily Crusaders can't capitalise, spilling the ball and giving the ball back to Saints.

"That player should be hauled off the pitch and made to write a hundred lines I shall not pass the ball like that" Ray French, Priceless

which pass was that referring to?

Ball goes wide to Shenton who gives a great quick ball to Gardner to go in for his second. Foster misses the covnersion.

Full time hooter goes, Saints 34 - 18 Crusaders.

Well atleast we only got beat 12 - 4 in the second half! Our performances once we gain a lead are shocking but still it's 2 points in the bag! Welldone lads.

why oh why do they let the other team make a comeback every week?
surley simmons can see it......with a big lead they shoul'd be putting the other teams to bed.
...(never satisfied even when we win

)

Not sure, I was making a brew at the time with the sound down (son in bed and his room is right above), just caught him saying it and gut laughed

I'm inclined to agree, the fact that we let the other team score 2 or 3 tries at the death when we're winning needs to be addressed. Last year 4 points was the difference between 2nd and 3rd, who's to say that won't be the case again this year.

He can. He said so in his pre-match comment on the Saints site. He also said in his post match comment that he told them at halftime to respect the opposition. But they didn't. They got casual again.

Guys 2nd in the league??????

Are we turning into the Whino's on here??

We want to be a championship winning side. You don't become one of those by putting your cue on the rack when things are looking good. You become one of those by killing off your opposition. We have adopted a casual attitude which is a bad habit that is proving hard to break.

Thankfully that is our only realy gripe at the moment and they must be doing a lot right if we are complaining about things when our team is winning games in one half, things could be a lot worse.

But I agree it is something that has got to go from our game before it costs us in our final position or worse a knockout match, its casual rather than just lazy but it is a bad habit than can be hard to stop.

Oh yeah, I agree with all that. In some ways, though, that makes the second half attitude worse to take! Knowing what the team can now do, having a hint of what it has the potential to do, only to watch them put it under threat in the second half is very frustrating!


Yep. Exactly.

The bigger tests are still to come, if we can put on an 80 minute perfomance against Wigan in 2 weeks time, I will be happy. Mentally, being totally focussed for 80 minutes, week in, week out, is draining, doing enough to win, and then raising the bar for the big games is a better option.

This was a potential banana skin which we avoided, we're second after a terrible start to the season, and yet people are still complaining?

Did anyone actually go? Can we have your veiws?

We played very well in the 1st half with ball in hand. We were quick around the ruck, the forwards made good yards and we created plenty of chances out wide. We scored some excellent tries down the middle and out wide and they weren't barge over tries like last week.

2nd half we completely dropped off the pace and allowed Crusaders back into it. We gave away alot more penalties, dropped the ball signficantly more and didn't play with the same intensity. Crusaders almost got it back to 30-24 so we were lucky to hold on a bit at the end. Their 2nd try was exceptionally poor defence from Wheeler, he barely made an attempt to make a tackle. I think we miss Meli at Centre, he provides us with more natural power and pace outwide.

Overall, glad to take the win but plenty to work on.

Perfection has always been hard to acheive, even in our year of doing the double we would fall off the pace. It's a mental thing, you get a lead like that and your mind drifts, maybe to getting picked for next week, maybe about getting your name on the scoreboard, maybe into thinking about those niggles you are carrying and not making them worse.

It may not be the correct thing, but it is the human thing to do. You think less about the instant and more about can we put 40 /50 /60 on these guys. That's what the fans do, which is fine because we don't have to play, I think in more intense incounters the drop off would not occur. It would be great if it did not happen in every game, but only 5 games ago we where suffering the opposite way where we where poor in the first half, letting sides get a 16 18 20 point lead. The team has turned alot around in that time and we are now on the right track.

I do understand the frustration but I guess my mind is still in the place of this is far better than what we were doing less than a month ago, it was only the 11th of March when we lost to Quins. The direction is good and the turn around in 4 games has took us from thinking we might struggle to make the top 4, to contenders once again. The fixtures remaining this week and next mean we could be top by the time we go to the pie dome.

I'm just trying to be positive.

On a side note, we are playing with 1 man less than the rest of the league in every game through our own choice.

I don't know if it's a fitness measure by Simmons, but there are plenty of 2nd rowers who could cover a back position, yet Simmons does like having cover for the backs.

I do hope it's just an early season strategy, in reality if a back does get injured Wilkin, flannery, dixon, moore, can provide plenty of cover.

It's a 17 man game and we look like for the forseeable future we are going to be playing with 16. That is going to impact on a side. I hope it's not a fixed train of thought, and is flexible depending upon who is available and who we are playing.

I know last year we had a lot of injuries in the backs at the back end, but mostly that was down to Eastmond coming on and getting a knock straight away. It was more unfortunate than a regular risk.

I doubted this approach, but you cant argue with the results

I'd be more worried if we were performing for 80 mins regularly now. There's no point blowing ourselves out in the first two months of the season, we need to win matches now and hit real consistent form coming into the play offs. That's when you win things.

What he said.
Some sublime stuff in the first half. Total lack of intensity second half.