The pack stats from the game:

Crosby 120m 15 carries 8m per carry 21 tackles 2 missed tackles
Flower 100m 11 carries 9.09m per carry 27 tackles 1 missed tackles
Tuson 56m 10 carries 5.60m per carry 16 tackles 3 misssed tackles
Farrell 143m 20 carries 7.15m per carry 40 tackles 1 missed tackle
O'Loughlin 60m 13 carries 4.61m per carry 39 tackles 2 missed tackles
Taylor 112m 13 carries 8.62m per carry 27 tackles 1 missed tackle
Hughes 53m 8 carries 6.63m per carry 12 tackles 2 missed tackles
Burke 24m 3 carries 8m per carry 13 tackles 0 missed tackles

Clough 105m 19 carries 5.53m per carry 25 tackles 3 missed tackles
Laffranchi 74m 14 carries 5.29m per carry 22 tackles 2 missed tackles
LMS 58m 9 carries 6.44m per carry 25 tackles 3 missed tackles
Manu 55m 10 carries 5.5m per carry 4 tackles 1 missed tackles
Walker 51m 13 carries 3.92m per carry 21 tackles 2 missed tackles
Soliola 89 metres 15 carries 5.93m per carry 17 tackles 1 missed tackle
Flanagan 63m 14 carries 4.5m per carry, 21 tackles 3 missed tackles
Walmsley 174m 17 carries 10.24m per carry 23 tackles 1 missed tackle

Overall pack:
Wigan 668m 93 carries 7.18m per carry 195 tackles 12 missed tackles
Saints 669m 111 carries 6.03m per carry 158 tackles 16 missed tackles

Our 3 more experienced forwards in LMS, Laffranchi and Clough are pathetic in terms of their go forward. For me Laffranchi doesn't do enough, he clearly isn't a prop forward and like Hohaia whoever recruited him needs to be removed from the role of recruiting next time. Against a pack like that fielded by Wigan, Laffranchi should have had a field day. He's a 32 year (Supposedly in his prime) forward with a career CV including 200+ NRL games, State of Origin and playing for Australia and yet he was bullied by a group of Wigan forwards who bar O'Loughlin (Who was clearly injured) are all very young. It's not good enough and if anything proves our current overseas crop in Laffranchi, Perry and Hohaia are amongst our weakest players. None of them should be at the club next season, if 'Boof' gets another year there is something very wrong at the club.

LMS's stats show what I thought watching it, he doesn't have the stamina to be a 60 minute workhorse prop. He needs to be playing 15 minutes each half and told to really rip in for those minutes. He had a great season when we played at Widnes and always made an impact when he came on. This season so far he looks pretty feeble. Clough too, should be contributing more metres than that against such an inexperienced pack.

Walmsley stands out like a sore thumb, as does Farrell for Wigan. Forget this talk of bedding him in, give him more responsibility now, he's clearly up to it.

Shame that Laffranchi is playing prop because he knows how to run onto the ball and I'd love to see him running onto the ball out wide in the second row. Defensively we were pitiful yesterday. We should have been thirty points down by half time and fortunately the Pies were jittery when they broke through otherwise it could have been embarrassing.

Clough's stats are pretty good, thought he had his best game for a good while yesterday.

Agree on Laffranchi and LMS though. Laffranchi just isn't a prop and I've believed for a while that LMS is slightly over-rated and is far too inconsistent.

Walmsley's stats are incredible, we've got a serious talent on our hands here.

Walmsley, who's played just a handful of SL games, put the rest of our pack to shame. He looks like a really good prop, Laffranchi on the other hand...

It is hard to disagree with the numbers.

Walmsley: Very Good
Clough: Good
Soliola: OK
Laffranchi, Flanagan and LMS: Poor

Crazy thing with Walmsley is he isn't even doing has fair share of minutes yet. What are has stats going to look like when is is out on the pitch for 40-50 mins.

Flash and Boof are OOC at the end of the year. If Saints know what they are doing (not guarenteed) both will be on their way.

Laffranchi's taking up a quota too. Only Puletua and Soliola are proving their worth as overseas players for me.

Agreed. I imagine laffranchi will be on decent money as well given he was our 'replacement' for Jammer



Hopefully him and Perry leaving will fill up some money. I hope we keep Flanagan though, good, solid player IMO.

I don't think you can compare stats when Manu and Soliola make most of their metres running out wide while the rest do the hard graft up the middle.

Liam Farrell 40 tackles, 143 metres ONE missed tackle , get rid.

As mentioned earlier , i think we should look at playing lafranchi in the back row.

I think a pack of

Perry
Roby
Walmsley
Soliola
Lafranchi
Wellens

Bench. Puletua, Manu, Clough, LMS

would take some stopping.

Hmm, it strikes me that Laffranchi is an experienced second-row who has played at prop pretty much every game this season. He's played more games than any other Saints 'prop', off half-back pairings that change almost weekly etc etc. Give that guy a break!!!

He was rested against Salford last week.

I get the feeling it could be little late to be converting Wellens to the pack. He is used to about 12 years of standing around until the last tackle, a modern day smallish backrower needs to be making 30 plus tackles a game. Couple that with the need to get bigger, it is a difficult transition that should have been made 2-3 years ago.

Yesterday was enough for me. He was knackered after 10 minutes and pretty much got injured every time he went near a Wigan forward. For me, he's not physically up to playing at loose forward. I'm sure he'd be willing to give it a go, regardless of getting knocked out every time he went for a tackle, but I'm not sure we should be asking him to.

Is it only me that thinks Laffranchi would be too slow to play 2nd row? Can't help but think teams like wigan yesterday would target him in defence to try and get as many runners at him as possible

Laffranchi has never been a prop, I don't know why we consistently play him there.

I think our pack is overrated by many on this forum. We have no quality in the props bar Walmsley (people think clough played well when his stats are the same as boofs)

Our only pack quality is roby and the back row Samoans but this is negated by the lack of grunt up front.

Prop is an urgent recruitment issue as well as half back

Why put Laffranchi in the second row and leave one of your most potent attacking threats and best offloader (Manu) on the bench? He shouldn't have been signed, simple as that. Averaging out across the sqaud, we are a small pack and consistently get dominated in the middle of the park. TP is the biggest forward in the league but wants to be a wide running back rower, unfortunately, he doesn't do much running nowadays and opposition teams know to move in quickly in him and he is nowhere near as effective.

I said said very early into Laffranchi first season that he's not a prop. Hes to small and gets physically dominated by good packs.

I agree, whoever signed him as a prop abs lance as a stand if want shooting.

I fell sorry for Nathan Brown having to deal with the mess he's been left with.

The idea would be that he would be used as an impact player, maybe?

Manu is a threat with the ball, no doubt about it, but he does make some errors. One of my mates thinks he's a liability, but I think that is a little harsh.

Outstanding stats by Walmesley, looks like a great find.
However he looks like our only prop. Very dissapointed by our alleged senior props.

Don't forget walmsley was returning the ball from the drop outs which have blown up his stats. Not that I'm bagging him, he looks like a great signing, but stats aren't everything. At the end of the season, perry has to go, because he has been consistently poor and can't string any game together netween injuries. TP has probably been our best prop this year, but is old and also picks up too many injuries. Laffranchi is the only prop we can rely on to play the majority of games, and although he isn't a world beater, is a solid pro who should be given another year while we hint for other props and let the likes of walmsley develop. Flanaghan is nothing special. If he's on nothing special wages, I'd be tempted to keep him, otherwise ship him out.

I'd offer Flanagan and Laffranchi new deals. If Perry and TP are both leaving, then it could be tricky to have to replace 4 forwards at once.

Bring in another grafter down the middle and move Boof to 2nd row, allowing Wilkin to GTFO of the halves whilst allowing Wellens to retire gracefully.

Laffranchi played second row in the NRL, so must have been doing something right there. I think if we played him there, he'd play so much better.