Near perfect, bloody 'ell Saddened!

Too many times with tackles in the bank you made dumb plays, Meli's pass to Foster in the fast half, Wellens & Moore dropped simple balls early in the tackle count etc.

You can take great heart from your defence today, from an attacking point of view, lots to work on.

Very harsh. Yes, we were naive in attack, but our management of the ruck was pretty good, and save for a sloppy ten minute spell in the second half during which we allowed Wigan to dictate terms, we slugged it out in the middle.

We can slug it out n the middle with anyone but it's all wasted when we can't do anything with the ball.

For most of today's game, I just couldn't see us scoring.

As a neutral who no longer subscribes to Sky, I don't get to see you too often these days. I was skocked by your decline. Yes, you did alot of the basics right but I thought you were poonderous in attack and lacked ideas. Having said that, based on what Royce Simmons said I'm not sure half the team were fit - which is what I was thinking whilst watching. EG Fraham looked knackered, Meli (aside from his two try creating moments!) looked awful too. I reckon they were ill / unfit. If that was the case, it was a pretty good performance.

I don't think Wigan are a great side at present. I just think others are much weaker than they have been in recent years which makes them look better than they are.

I agree, I just thought CM's criticism of our defence was unwarranted.

Thsts a little unfair on Wigan, they are are very well drilled team and clinical today.

Your correct, we do the basics well and we work hard but we ain't good enough with ball in hand.

Sorry, I haven't watched it on tv, just got back but don't agree that it was a good performance. There was plenty of effort but in attack, for the first 65 mins, we were pretty much clueless at the end of our sets. We wasted field position and possession over and over again and despite having numerous sets on wigans line, we weren't clinical enough. That was the difference between the two sides, Wigan had 3 chances to score are took every one. Not a perfect performance, but again, can't fault the effort.

Don't want to bag them when they are down but Scott Moore made a handling error under the Wigan sticks when we had a great chance of scoring, he compounded it on the next set with a high shot that cost us a penalty, put Wigan in our 20m area and they scored. It's things like that that Wigan punish you for. I agree about Leon too, thought he was pretty anonymous all afternoon, catch and pass every time, we were slagging Kyle off for just the same kind of thing at the start of the season.

Couldn't agree more mate but you'll not convince the one eyed ones on here and there'll be a million pages of excuses before dawn breaks. Wigan are really effective across the park and get no more luck than anyone else - at the moment you are just so much better than any other team and as I said at the start of the season you'll win both competitions by a long way.

For me the difference today was the same difference there's been all season and that I've been saying all season. The coach. You have a superb one who is skilled at team excellence in every discipline, we have an average one whose only contribution is to perpetuate the one dimensional nature of our team. Saints won't win anything until we get a superb one.

Congrats - enjoy your day at Wembley (hope you get stuffed mind

)

First of all I didn't think it was a great game, and neither did I think that both teams played to the best of their ability. Although I would say Saints played closer to their best than Wigan did.

I thought Saints dominated territory and field poisistion, but due to inept attack and great Wigan defense, you couldn't make it pay.

I thought the biggest difference, and I'm in agreement with StPete on this one. Is the poor quality of the Saints backs, and their inability to break tackles or create something out of nothing. Which is due in part to the poor style of attack you play. Pryce was once again hailed as the messiah and savior, yet ultimately failed to deliver as he has so often in the past.

Still credit to your lads, they may not have won. But the effort they put in was there for all to see.

Finally just for FearTheVee's benefit. Wilkin was anonymous as he is in all the big games.

Of course Saints have had their injuries but have to overcome them, squads are there for that purpose.
As has been said Fielden played just one game this season. Mossop is a stand in prop!
Roberts was superb prior to being injured v HKR last year and has hardly played since.
Gleeson hasn't been replaced. Wigan are playing Joel T in his place and he ain't a centre!
Saints would have been going into the game minus players as did Wigan. Both teams would have had players out there carrying knocks. That happens this time of the season.
Saints are having to re-build after years of having the same top class players perform for them. They are now almost all gone.
Graham is departing as is Eastmond, Pryce is going to Catalans as you know. Again, all three are quality players who will have to be replaced.

I would suggest you think about the DW match and reconsider. As Simmons said in his post match interview, we were too lateral in attack. We didn't run on to the ball, we didn't back up, we flung it out wide when we should have struck from the middle. Why did we do these things? Because our halfbacks were missing. Leon Pryce didn't turn up today, made some howlers and in actual fact, due to Wigan's superb defence in the first half, we actually had the wrong stand off on the pitch. We needed Lee Gaskell. We have scored tries from his kicks. Kicking was the only thing that would have given us tries in the first half. Poor old Jon Wilkin tried his hardest but we needed a skilled kicker and he was on the bench. That, IMO, was the only mistake Simmons made as coach today. The rest was down to Wigan and our own players.

What I thought was very encouraging was that we took the game to Wigan and we disrupted them. Damn shame we couldn't make the kill but them's the breaks and I just hope that Roby and Graham playing with serious injuries hasn't ruined our chances of beating Hudds on Friday. That is a very important game for us if we are to get something from this crazy season.

And we do deserve something IMO.

We're not as good as Warrington or Wigan. 3rd is fine for us, we don't deserve to win anything.

I wouldn't be sure of 3rd mate.

Assuming we can field a team on Friday night, then we will find out whether we deserve to be third on Friday night, won't we? If we lose then we don't deserve it and it's unlikely we will get anything from the season.

When was the last time we didn't make a final?

2005 wasn't it? We were undone by injuries to our key players if I remember.

Near perfect, really?

Numerous knock ons, clueless kicking a lot of the time, stupid penalties.

The game wasw there for you to win today, but you didn't capitalise on your dominance in the first half.

Firstly, well played. Defensively i thought both teams were excellent today. Both teams looked very nervous, certainly in the first 30.

As mentioned previously in the thread the biggest difference was Sam T v Wellens. You desperatly need a full back with pace. The role of full back has changed significantly since Wellens started playing, with respect to him as he has been a great player over the years for you, his place is at Widnes/Salford now.

I think the other big difference was team selection. You had too many players on the pitch who shouldn't have been there. Maguire chose not to select Hock as he is not up to speed yet. Simmons picked Graham who should never of played. Pryce is a top class player and did his best but was obviously not up to speed.

With a few more bodies nearing full fitness for the play offs you will be in with a shout. Us on the other hand will be knackered by then. Unfortunatly for both of us it may be the year of the wolf

I notice you haven't found your way onto the Wigan board this evening

at least we didnt knock on or give any penalties away



for me the 2 best teams in the league there and cancelled each other out.

Certainly cancelled each other out, two robotic teams putting on a very dull encounter for the neutrals.

Suppose that was a glimpse of what SL will be like in 5 years when everyone adopts Wigans wrestling style.

Of course it would be much better if everyone adopted sloppy defense instead. That way we would all get to watch a high volume of easy tries, right?

Didn't your very own Micky Higham recently get banned for 2 matches as a result of doing dangerous tackle? Seems like your new to them already.

Yes it would be, as opposed to 20 second tackles, starting to turn into Union the amount of time each tackle takes.

It never fails to amaze me how some people whinge about good defense being "boring" whilst completely failing to realise that excitement will be totally absent if points are easy to come by. Teams like Wigan make it difficult to score, and that's good for the English game. And when everybody else's attack catches up it will be even better, especially for the neutrals to watch (though the games this year which have been touted as great adverts for Rugby League are Wigan-Saints Good Friday and Wire-Wigan QF). Until then, fans should stop whinging and ask more of their own clubs instead of expecting Wigan to make it easy for them. Watching Wire put 60 past Salford is extremely boring mate. What next, a letter to Mike Maguire "Please sir, let us score." Pathetic.