Our biggest problem this season is having the mental strengths when we encounter intensity in games. When we play the poorer teams we,ve got no problem running up cricket scores, but I can,t recall many games where we have won a game in the last 5 mins through defence or attack. Our home games against Catalans, Hull and Wigan were very poor mentally, a trait which has got worse over the past 3 seasons.
We also seem very reluctant to exercise unpredictable game plans is this because we don,t have the playmakers with off the cuff plays. We know Lance is not a stand off but he he still playing the same way last night as round 1, I know we have a temporary coaching set up but surely we should come up with different tactical plans to counteract the more competitive teams.

+1000000000000000001

When talking about Makinson for me his key weakness is the inability to read the game well.
By that i mean that a natural finisher will know when and were a break is likely to take place, and consequently put themselves in a position to be on the end of passes to score trys. Jamie Foster for all the abuse he gets amongst Saints fans has shown a greater aptitude in this department compared to Tommy.
Wello is a classic example of a player who reads the game extremely well. For all his lack of pace, he scores shed loads of trys. This is because he has that skill of knowing when to join the line and were to be to take maximum advantage of a break.

Where Tommy excels is in what i would class as concentration. He always seems to be focused on the job in hand and doing the basics well.
Other young players tend to "ride the wave" in that their form can crest and trough quite heavily. Tommys game tends to merely ripple.

So what do you suggest he does? Run over defences? Perhaps send two and three tacklers flailing to the floor as he fires up the field?


You are joking, right? Makinson has the best mental attitude in the team (along with Robes).


What a joke. Did you not see the defender coming up on him? First of all he took one defender on the outside - I notice that isn't mentioned in your summing up (and how often have people bleated on here about our wingers never taking on the defence on the outside?) - and then he sees a defender ahead, with the touchline nearby, sees Lomax following up, doesn't want to throw a forward and waits just long enough to keep the defence guessing to make sure Lomax has the best chance of scoring. I thought that was a great piece of play and showed real awareness of what was going on around him.

I think CHAIRMAKER has made some very valid points, Wellens being the typical example of reading the game to substitute his lack of pace.
Makinson needs to bring some unpredictability to his game, something he can,t gain experience quickly enough from due to our lateral plays.
I seem to remember his debut game was coming in at centre and was hoping this would be his final position, think he is wasted on the wing. So if he is full back next season he has still has a lot to learn and avoid running into blind alleys. More experience in a settled position, he will do OK.

And here lies the big question mark over a future career at full back. Makinson has all the right attributes (speed, agility, hands, defence etc.) - but if he cannot accurately read the optimum point at which to insert himself into the line (or judge which way an attacker is likely to go) he will struggle to make a fist of that position.

Could you give me an example of when he didn't do this last night, given that he only had about 10 minutes on the pitch? Or when he hasn't done it in the recent past in his rare appearances at fullback? Because I'm struggling to think of an occasion. Last night, for example, he appeared to chime in beautifully, on both sides, and the team looked much more dynamic in attack as they approached the West Stand as a result of his presence there.

I didn't see the game last
Night but am quite surprised at how low key this thread is. Ok, it was "only" bradford and they had lots of injuries, but we racked up 50 odd points and kept a clean sheet, on what sounded a grotty night which could easily have been a banana skin. Couldn't really ask for much more. Are we still down from the Wigan maulings? It's a shame that we don't seem to be able to celebrate good performances, simply because at the minute we arent as good as wigan

A number of people are to busy defending opinions they formed months ago, and will only acknowledge positives if it supports said position.

I swear there are some already excitedly waiting for the likes of Brown, Turner et al to arrive just to watch them fail.

I thoroughly enjoyed last night, we beat the team in front of us by a good score, scored some lovely tries and saw some promising performances from our youngsters and from some of our senior players who had been under performing.

More of the same, please.

While you say we couldn't ask much more than a 54-0 mauling that alone says that the match was not competitive but also we didn't exactly play champagne rugby. Actually, we just played as we usually do for the most part, once we had got our knock ons/penalties out of the way in the first 20 minutes (which is really all Bradford competed for).

It was a very dull match to watch, with just the occasional rather good try to life the spirits. There was no atmosphere among Saints fans, who appeared largely bored (and wet!).

Yes, it was a win and a good win for the points difference and league position. But we could ask for more: a competitive match and a match in which we play better attacking rugby. So I suppose the low key approach on here is a reflection of the low key game last night.

We could have defended poorly and allowed them some more points. We could have attacked poorly and scored fewer points. Maybe had a couple of players sent off to even things up. In tge end we defended well, scored some great tries and came up with a clinical performance. Sometimes you just can't please anyone.

If you thought it was a dull game as a Saints fan..imagine what it was like for us Bulls fans!

Well, you did ask the question (kind of) and I just gave you an honest answer. We didn't have an awful lot to defend to be fair but personally, if it was going to be a walkover (which it turned out to be) then the 'What more could you want?' question is easily answered: 'A more creative attack please'

The number of people with their back to play,chatting with their mates rather than watching the game was indicative of how dull the game was to watch.Given the weather i was pleasantly surprised at the score but dissapointed at the lack of contest,but you can only play whats infront of you and 2 points and a nilling is allways good for the league table.

I really feel for your supporters. I used to love the Saints - Bulls rivalry and got on well with some of your supporters despite the rivalry. The way your club has been run in recent years is a disgrace and you deserve better than that. Your performance last night was shocking (I appreciate you had injuries), I never once felt like you were going to penetrate our line. If you'd have said to me 6 or 7 years ago we'd beat Bradford 54-0 at home, I'd have probably laughed at you.

I would imagine for you guys it was more painful than dull? I felt sorry for your fans, who came in good numbers given all the difficulties and the horrendous conditions, and stayed until the end too, which impressed me. Such a shame that things have come to the situation they have at Bradford.

To get back on topic; I think Makinson does very well considering he is playing outside Shenton. The shenty acolytes on here are costantly complaining about the lack of good ball being fed to him; what about the lack of ball to Makinson from Shenton.

Let's just blame Super Royce for this for signing hohaia on as a halfback



Shenton is rubbish because he gets no ball or poor ball, makinson can't get any ball or good ball off shenton because lance hohaia cant get any ball to him because he's rubbish.

It's all super Royce fault.

when bewaretheshadows predicted a 42-10 win i wrote

No is the answer, they're far worse

Well the game in France I would say went in our favour today. That's 2 points clawed back on Catalan, we now just need one other team to do us a favour and then it's in our own hands to take that spot off them.

We are clawing our way back into contention each week and putting full effort into hammering teams below us will only help with the point difference late on in the season when teams start coming back within range.

Getting back into range of the top 4 is not the difficulty, is the hell uva beating Wigan are giving everyone on the way to the GF that will matter. I can well see us making and losing yet another GF.

If we continue to defend as well as we did against Hull (I can't really say we defended well against Bradford as they didn't really offer us anything to defend against!), and if we somehow manage to create a Plan B in attack for when Roby is being bashed about by their forwards, I would very much like us to meet Wigan in the knock out game of the playoffs.* This way we will avoid another humiliation/megga disappointment at Old Trafford if we are still unable to beat them but if we are able to beat them then we will be in a good position to win the bloody thing.

*The caveat to this is that should Wigan's form drop through the floor between now and the semi final of the playoffs I retract the statement because another team could be the Big Threat instead!

I did not get to see the game, but to keep any team to nil requires some kind of consistency in concentration, even if it requires no special effort in defence. I've seen in the past very good Saints teams not nil very poor teams just because the game was over by the time we where 20 points ahead. We are currently averaging post Royce 15.2 points against in defense. That's pretty decent. It's something that has really been tightened up, and that includes the shalckings against Wigan.

I enjoyed it. We crushed them up front and our abilty to complete a high % of sets means that in that situation, the opposition don't get a look in. We were also kicking on the front foot which meant we completely dominated territory.

Whilst there wasn't a lot of champagne rugby, if you compare the match to, say, the Wakefield game, we were a lot more expansive. This can be seen by our scoring a number of tries out wide.
It still didn't flow as well as it could, but we did try to move it wide of the ruck more often than usual, making the defence spread and giving Lomax that touch of freedom he needs to get his game going and Roby seemed happy to draw and give more often.
Lance still didn't impress me, his postioning at 2nd receiver seems to make things awkward. He obviously has ability in certain situations, which his try showed, but things don't look slick when he's involved at 5/8th and he often makes the wrong decision of which way to shift play.

Wello went off with 5-10 minutes to go and makinson went to full back certainly showed one nice touch coming into the line and one less than impressive when he gave a bad pass to slow up a move. It did seem like we kind of forced it through him once he'd moved, though.

Young Josh Jones got a hattrick. I reckon if he keeps his head he'll be a saints player for the next 10 years. Whether he'll be a star centre or just a solid shirt filler I don't know, but he'll be good enough for a decnt SL side to rely on, I reckon.
Out going Shenton showed a lovely bit of centre play for Lomax's 2nd try which was complimented by a nice fend from Tommy Mak.

Bradford didn't get much going, but they did have their moments of pressure and we worked hard when we had to in order to keep them out. The Nil part of the scoreline was richly deserved.

It didn't look like a bad pass to me. Shenny just dropped it. The only way it might have been bad which would have been hard to assess would be if it had been too fast but it was back and to the right area of the body so IMO Shenny should have got it.


Fend? You mean he skinned the opposition on the outside?

I think that particular try was one of the best I've seen all season from Saints.

He fended off Jeffries with a hand off.

Watching the game back, there was some poor tackling one on one, which was the same for the Bulls in the Cas game. Carney repeatedly compared the Bulls poor tackling with the Tiger's poor positional defence.