Indeed. We did well in the first half because we starved Catalans of possession and severely limited their time in our half. It was good, but it served to mask our deficiencies when it comes to defending our line. Pretty much every time Catalans started a set in our half it was a guaranteed try, and this has been the case in all the games so far. It reminds me a little of England's defence in the world cup.

Sort that out and the rest will follow.

Lets get my original post into perspective here.

SaintsFan and Northampton Saint in particular.

I am probably one of the least fickle saints fans you will ever meet, and we look as though we have gone backwards from last season, even the early season form is worse than last years.

I was pointing out that Wigan look better than last year and are streets ahead of us at the moment, we need to up our game to match them but unfortunately i'm not sure if we have it in us this year. Losing KC and Jammer in the past 2 season has really hit this team.

Get a reality check guys !!

Its only four weeks since the Wigan boards were suicidal because they lost with virtually a full strength team to that set of 'minnows' from Huddersfield with nine regulars out and were asking for 'Boo' to be put back to stand off !! and questioning whether they should keep Wane !!!!

Since then they beat Leeds fair enough but also Bradford and Castleford and put them away as a Wigan team on a roll always will..... but to be fair us 'minnows ' would expect to win at Bradford and Castleford this season !! as surely would Saints !! Yes decent side Wigan but so are we and so are Saints I wouldn't expect wigan to put significant points on either of us on our own 'middin' and if we get our full side out i would expect to beat them at home !!

Nonsense - we've so far lost narrowly (and by some accounts perhaps unluckily) to an almost certain top 4 team, and drawn at a ground where we always normally manage to find spectacularly entertaining ways to lose. In both of those games we were apparently the better team for most of it but just faded towards the end.

I saw both of the games against Wire and Harlequins last season - in no way have we even come near to the dire level of performance we put out in those 2 games, Quins in particular. We'd have lost by 50 against Cats if we had...

Any way you cut it, we're looking better and stronger now than at the equivalent point last season.

Until all the teams have at least played each other once, i'll reserve judgement to who i fancy for the GF and CC, Catalans are not all that, Saints just collapsed after being on top for most of the game and i can't see other teams in the same position doing the same. Freak win that for me.

Saints will come good, i just think it's the early season jitters/finding your feet taking a bit longer that than it usually does for Saints, the only real test Wigan have faced is Hudds and came up short.

Leeds had other things on their mind and i'm sure if that game had been played a few weeks later rather than a week before the WCC the game would have been a lot closer.

I don't know what our best team is, do you? Last year, we were pretty much forced into a certain side due to injuries. This year we haven't suffered as badly (touch wood) and therefore have options. At full back we have Wellens, Hohaia, Lomax and Makinson who could all play there. On the wing we have Foster, Gardner and Makinson. In the halves we have Hohaia, Lomax, Gaskell and Wheeler. We don't know our best props yet either. I think Royce is struggling to pick his best side hence the rotation and hence a bit of struggle to find some consistency. Hopefully he'll find the right balance soon and we'll see a more consistent team.

Whilst I have doubts over Simmons I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt as he took us to a Grand Final and was close to taking us to the Challenge Cup Final last year too.

It's not my job to know what the best team for the club is, it's Royce Simmons job. This is the coach that decided against pre season games and then starts to experiment during the season with his line ups!

I stand by everything I said, he'll set us back years with his crazy methods and completey shocking recruitment.

Great guy, crap coach!

Wellens needs putting to pasture or sold to Widnes.

You need more grunt up front.

Foster needs to sort his D out rather than his hair.

Simple really

Add to that decide upon and stick with a half back combination, sort the defence out and we're sorted.

it really is that simple.

Yes in an ideal world we'd have 2 more international props and a 30 yr old tommy Martyn with 20 yr old knees but our current squad could win things if organised and drilled well.

Are you suggesting it's coach to blame for us being utter crap?

the attack certainly isnt crap, second best in the league, but the defence unfortunately is, its an embarrasment and Royce should be under huge pressure from Eammon over it

I don't think the attack is great as a team, it's not like we are putting moves on and looking good, it's mostly roby who starts everything and it's then individual skill rather than a well drilled move.

The defence is the worst I've seen from a saints team in god knows how many years.

We are poorly coached team.

You are of course assuming it is the coach who is responsible here. He may have worked hard with them and got structures in place, structures they were sticking to during the first half but fell away from in the second. Simmons can hardly go on to the pitch and remind them of what they are supposed to be doing, can he? His influence leaves the minute the players walk out of the tunnel, and you know that. So we will never know whether our defence is the fault of the coach or the players. We became pretty good defensively last season in the end. Fourth in the table for defence I believe? We had the same coach last year as this, so I'm less inclined to blame him for the outrageous leakage of the last two games. (We held Salford scoreless in the second half remember)

I rather think it's our forwards being lazy myself. That and the fact that James Graham isn't around to clean up after all that laziness.

You are not watching the matches are you? I think you are sneakily watching Wigan instead.


You said that this time last year too but we still got to a Grand Final.


You said that this time last year too but we still got to a Grand Final.

You are beginning to be really, really boring now Pete. Why not think a little more rather than regurgitating the same statements over and over again?

Im doing a impression of you from the other year when posting about potter



Just admit it, Royce isn't good enough, he's no idea what he's doing and I honestly think he's set us back years with his crazy crazy recruitment.

Lets hope that now the stadium is sorted, the Chair can put all his focus towards the appointment of a decent coach at the end of the season

I'll put money on Royce not being here next year. God help the new coach who's got to pick up the mess he will be leaving behind.

To say we are in a mess to me is a gross overstatement. We are one maybe 2 props light and admittedly that was a grave error in recruitment this summer. Although from what we hear (Griffin etc) we did try and get props. This will probably effect us badly this season and it looks like we are probably going to suffer for it

If we can get these props in next season, with the continued development of our young back line i think we will be in a pretty good place to compete.

I think that's what makes us harder to beat, Wigan are structured and you can study videos and come up with a game plan, not that it's easy to beat Wigan, sometimes you know what's coming but don't possess the skill to stop it.

Wire though seem to throw it around a little try a couple of daft moves and probe for a weakness, then once they think they have found a weakness just zone in on it.

Next time you watch Wire just watch them once they think a team is weak in a certain area, everything goes there, set after set.

Followed by Try after Try

Really SaintsFan?
I seem to remember another coach that could get us to a grand final, but could never get a compliment from you.

That's right.

And this has relevance to whether Wigan look good or not because?

It has no relevance to that, but it is strange that reaching a GF is now seen as a sign of success by you, when Potter doing it twice meant nothing.

Pete was just stirring and I'm not going any further down that route.

I lurve Roycey babes.