I remember in my first team (RU) debut, I was getting up from a ruck at a stoppage in play. We were near our line and under pressure and my captain was stood next to me, he put his hand on my shoulder, pushed me back down and told me to stay there. 30 seconds for a quick check from our physio and we'd regrouped well enough to defend the line.

A little bit of gamesmanship is always going to exist in some form, and to be too pedantic about it is a bit misery, but last night LMS was at in constantly. Even the commentary team were taking the mick out of him, saying he gets injured everytime there's a drop out. Did I also hear Silverwood tell him to stop play acting at one point?

Surely the biggest threat to play acting would be to win the ball and then play act and have the decision about winning the ball overturned, resulting in a penalty that was key to us losing the game?

Oh!

You saw a different last 10 minutes to me. Cas looked threatening every time they got the ball and we didn't. Simple as.

Agreed, we deserve to lose games if our players are going to behave like that. Embarrassing.

All the more disappointing because if you take away his ridiculous penalties he had a cracking game in a poor pack performance.

If Castleford looked threatening it was because we conspired to give them as much possession as possible through repeated acts of stupidity, not to mention the fact that fortune smiled on them again and again.

Bad enough that McDonnell collapsed in a heap and then Percival got sin-binned needlessly. But the real killer was Swift's injury. Yes, it robbed us of another back. But its inconvenience was nothing next to the lift it gave to our opponents.

With 70 minutes gone Castleford were beginning to look tired. Couple this with the fact that Saints are always strong in the final stanza when we usually bring our big forwards to bear. Unfortunately we were hit with the worst of all double-whammies when Swift went down and then remained ON THE PITCH for the best part of ten minutes. This gave Cas' flagging forwards all the time in the world to recuperate whilst we lost the fitness advantage we'd worked so hard to develop throughout the game.

As stated, WE were a bigger threat to our own defence than Castleford were.

I've not seen anyone mention it but did we finish the Cas game with 11 men? Percival got sin binned and didn't come back on. We also had Swift and McDonnell go off injured but I don't know if we had any interchanges left to change the two of them, or does it not count for injuries?

Disagree. You lot tired in the second half not us. Lynch Millington Mcmeekan were anything but flagging. Our pack dragged us back into the game. And overall in the second 40 we were pretty dominent. You can question your team all you like and lms was a clown in that last 10 but our fitness has been superb last 3 weeks, in essence that fitness has seen us see out 3 very tight games against good opposition home and away. (Not to mention nil a team in the second half at magic).

Aye, there was a team blowing but it wasn't Cas.

Agree. Disagree. That's your choice.

Without running the game again sans Swift's ten minute break the question is still up in the air.

Ultimately we only have ourselves to blame for wrapping up two points and presenting them to you tied with a bow.

Stupid and unprofessional.

I will meet you half way and agree with the latter.