Naughty naughty Pete. You missed out the one stat in Royce's favour.

A better defence.

We've had a better defence this year to last year. Personally I think we have stood still. Where as Warrington have advanced, but the jump is doable with the squad we have. It's not a chasm more a stream. Quite easy to hop over but you need the confidence to jump in the first place.

Also with Milward we did have full and thin years. We did not finish top every year under milward and he did bring through players too. I think DA had the strongest of squads and sensibly moved on the year we started to thin out.

I wasn't sure on the defence stat and I'm not the sort of guy that searches the net for stats.

Millward wasn't stupid, he knew finishing top means nothing these days so he picked his games and had us peaking play off time.

according to Ade that sums up his HT team talks

And my point, which you appear to be completely oblivious to, is that it's no good waking us up halfway through a contest when we've already gifted the lead to somebody. Surely it's better to be holding onto a lead after an hour than it is to be chasing a three try difference after twenty minutes.

A bit a of a silly point as neither are good situations, we dont want to be in a position were we have no momentum in the second half but equally we dont want to be chasing down big scores either. My point earlier and the comment made from the players was Potter's HT team talks were shockingly bad, in fact if what KC said was true it's the worse team talk I've ever known in my time in Rugby (And I've been through hundreds of teams talks)

I've read all 5 pages of this so far and its a really good read to see this discussion by knowledgable Saints fans about your former coaches.

As an outsider (Warrington fan) I am surprised to see some people saying they rated Millward above Anderson, IMO Millward was massively overrated and had the good fortune to enjoy 5 years of about a 10 year period when Saints had the best squad in the game. I think if DA had taken over Saints after Hanley then Saints would have been like Man United, won nearly every season, instead of only winning 3 SL titles in that time. It still shocks me that Bradford won 3 titles in that time because you look at their squad against Saints and they were good but in every dimension they were a slightly lesser version of Saints: Lowes/Cunningham; Withers/Wellens; Forshaw/Scully; Deacon/Long etc. I thought Millward built a reputation on controversy and big ego and he rode off the bandwagon of a great team which enabled him to pick up trophies, but he was hopelessly exposed at Wigan as not up to the job. Anderson IMO is the best coach in SL history with Tony Smith close behind.

I would have jumped at the chance to get DA as Warrington coach but I would never have wanted Millward, I doubt Millward could have achieved any more than Cullen, whereas I think DA could have done what Tony Smith has.

As for Potter he took over a team at an awkward time, where there are a lot of great players who have won a lot of trophies, slightly past their best, and its difficult as a new coach who hasn't won the trophies with those players, to manage the transition, look at Liverpool under Souness or Leeds under McDermott. In those circumstances I thought Potter, and now Royce, have done the job well because Saints have been within touching distance of trophies and still are. But neither Potter nor Royce are in the league of MacGuire, Smith or Anderson.

In Potters last season, remember the debacle at home against Hull in the fog? Well I know for a fact that potter was given 3 games to turn it around or he was gone. The club would have put KP in temp charge for the rest of season. Anyway, that week, the players had a meeting and decided to change their style of play back to what worked for them rather than how potter wanted them to play. The players felt they were being embarrassed by their own perfomamces and took matters into their own hands. Things certainly improved and potter kept his job, but it was down to player power rather than Potters coaching. Just looking at him in the ht team talks on sky with the dressing room camera, it was obvious that he offered no motivation whatsoever and had lost the respect of the senior members of the squad.

In which rugby league universe is being in the lead after sixty minutes not a good situation?

So a team filled with established winners bottled it? Give over.

Isn't 2007 the year we failed to score a try in the second half of every game against Leeds? They beat us home and away in the league quite comfortably iirc (though we suffered injuries in the game at Headingly).

We were out thought tactically in those grand finals with Leeds, they exposed our slow back three with ease and Anderson didn't/couldn't do a thing about it. It wasn't about bottle, it was about territorial advantage on a bigger pitch than Knowsley Road.

Is that what it was about in 2008 too? And 2009 with a different coach?

2007 was the year we finished top of the pile and beat Leeds 2 weeks before the Grand Final. It's quite easy to blame our back 3 for the defeat because the most memorable try from that game came from Donald rounding Wellens with ease on his way to a try. I don't recall anyone particularly worrying about our lack of pace (wellens, Gardner, Meli against Webb, smith, Donald) too much before hand. I do remember Saints being red hot favourites and not turnin up on the night. If you saw it that there could be a 29 point turnaround due to a slightly bigger pitch then fair enough. I guess that must have been the reason we went on to lose another 3 straight grand finals as well.

Ok maybe I didnt phrase that right lol , you don't want to be on the wring end of momentum though defending a slim lead

That would tie in with the reaction of the players on the night.

I had no idea Kevin Petterson was a Rugby Coach.

When it comes down to winning things both Potter and Simmons are nearly men I'm afraid

You can make excuses for them and say they have been the victim of difficult circumstances but for me they are missing the extra level of leadership that turns a team into winners

It would be interesting to fast forward a couple of years to see if there's much difference between the senior players' views of Simmons and Potter.

He's not the messiah he's a very naughty boy!

Dont's disagree, but other than the Eastmond saga which Royce inherited how many other rumours of discontent have you heard? No smoke without fire

It was a major part of it in all grand final defeats to Leeds, less so against Wigan when we'd managed to introduce some pace into the team with Eastmond and Lomax.

We beat Leeds by 2 points at home, in another game in which we failed to score a try against them in a second half. Of course you can cling to the solitary close win we had that season rather than the other two losses.

It's quite easy to blame our back three due to the viewing of Sinfield kicking us to death and our ball returners being so slow that we were starting our sets on our 10/20 metre line and they were starting there on their 30/40, which was a major cause of all our GF losses to Leeds. We lost the territorial battle because of it and so lost the games, not due to the fact that Donald scored a try.

There wasn't a major debate over the lack of pace before hand because most hadn't noticed it due to us playing on mostly smaller pitches, some had discussed it but had been roundly derided (and still are by some). However it was a weakness that Smith spotted and used to it's fullest advantage, and McClennan carried it on subsequently. Anderson didn't rectify it, Potter attempted to with the introduction of Eastmond out wide and then Foster and Lomax afterwards.

I seemed to have stepped into a parallel universe were some people would rather be 18 points down and having a go, than in front and holding on. Bizarre.

To me, there's no debate who is better in potter or da, its da everytime, da wasn't perfect, it could be argued he left us with an aging squad, and I believe potter was on a hiding to nothing regardless.

The main debate is, is Simmons better than potter, and you can't look at saints and think our X is better than last year, not significantly anyway. Defence is better this year, by effectively 1point a game, but attack is down by a converted try in every game. Similarly I don't think our style of play is particularly more entertaining, for me we score far too many tries from 5 yards through the props, agreed they all count the same, but its hardly what you'd call entertaining. When did we last go the length of the length of the field.

I have no doubt ade speaks lowly of potter, don't forget potter preferred foster over Gardner at the end of last season, a move everyone on here would have agreed on

One game which stands out, we went to wigan last year with a team of wellens, foster, Gidley, flannery, meli, pryce, Moore, graham, kc, hargreaves, Clough, dixon, tp... Roby, fozzard, ashurst and Johnson... And we won, I'd say that is as weak as any team we've put out against wigan or wire this year.

Potter wasn't that great, put so far to me Simmons isn't a whole lot better, he deserves another year. But purely on this season he's no better than potter

Nail pretty much on the head there.

Wigan and Warrington have demonstrated the huge difference a top coach can have and we must make this our priority when Simmons' reign ends.

As for those wanting Millward back - seriously?
I enjoyed the trophies immensely, of course, but I'm sure there are other coaches could have managed the majority, if not all, of those victories without dragging the club through scandal after scandal, and some of the most painful slaughterings I've ever had to watch my team go through.

I seem to remember that we couldn't get out of our own half in the first half of the 2002 grand final against Bradford and were outplayed for huge parts. Deacon kicked us to death in that game as well and we weren't starting our drives on the 10/20 metre line....we were there on our 3rd or 4th tackle at times yet we somehow found a way to win. What I'm trying to is that certain parts of our team are always going to perform at different levels but my opinion is that the whole team underperformed in that Grand Final. You are saying that we lost as a team because the pitch was wider and 3 of our 17 players couldn't get the ball back quickly enough. I agree that was certainly a factor in defeat but to suggest that the other 14 players didn't underperform is wrong.

Why did Leeds not blast us off the park in 2008 and 2009 when we had the same, slower back 3?

Those of us who tend to defend Potter aren't doing so because we think he was the bees knees, or because we rate him higher than other coaches we've had. We do so because in his tenure we didn't do badly, especially given the hand he was dealt, but he has acusations levelled at him (imo unfairly) that make him out to be the worst thing to happen to the club in years.

You should know by now that there are no grey areas amongst Saints fans. A player or a coach is either the greatest thing ever or absolutely e. There is no in-between or good aspects and bad aspects.

I wish I could live in such a black and white world. It must be a very simple straight forward world to live in with no debate or dilemmas to consider. I'll bet you could live to be 110 in such a gradient free would.