Huddersfield a bit all over the place as ever but pulled it together enough to finish us off, still struggling with our team I know it takes a good year or so when a new coach comes in I hope that we can switch out and in the right players and not lose the talented ones.

Not surprised Huddersfield were all over the place after Mamo went off with damaged ankle and Leeming went off with a suspected broken jaw. Lots of players playing out of position after that including Gaskell who's never a Full Back and was nearly caught out a few times with his lack of positional play, but altogether a gritty performance from Huddersfield to hold you out.

A bit arrogant.

full strength saints team cant beat 15 giants players and had an extra days rest

I'm not having a go at holdbrook as can't judge him on this year as we still stuck in the KC mould but nothing has changed at all. We had the new coach syndrome early on but other than that it's same.

Every man and his dog knew we had problems with ball in hand as we was 5 drives and kick team and very very boring but I expected holdbrook to install some structure in attack but nothing at all Has changed.

When we brought Hanley in, you could see straight away he brought a mental toughness in . When we brought millward in from the first game you could see he brought in attack. When Anderson came in our improvement in defence in first few weeks was clear to see but I can't see anything holdbrook has brought in.

I know it's hard to attack when we have Matty smith at 7 as he's just outright awful but Wigan won stuff with him at 7 so Wane got something out of him.

I'd just liked to have seen some new ideas and show us what we can look forward to next year

The players have been attempting new stuff in attack. That i feel is why we are dropping the ball so much.
For two and a half years the players were being de skilled. It will take a while for those players to re learn the consistency of how and when to pass, what are good angles to run etc.

When previous coaches took over they were already doing so from a solid well founded base. So they just needed to tweek things mid season, or had a full off season to prepare. A better comparison would be Mike Mclennan, he took over from the disastrous Murphy and it took the players time to adjust, however once they did. WOW!.

Surely fulltime professional players can pick up basic attacking structure?

KC can't have de skilled Matty smith, he only had about 2 games under him and this is fages first proper full season.

Not having pop but I just think few little plays in attack would have been good seeing as he says he's attack minded coach.

Maybe our attack is give the ball to Barba and hope he does something

Matty Smith worked well to a system at Wigan, where all the players were well drilled in running various plays.
He then came to Saints, got injured and encountered a system that was basically one man drives and a kick in the air.
As a half he needs to therefore rely on the players around him to run the plays he is calling. The players are not doing this because they no longer have the instinct of knowing what to do, other than one up barges. People then blame Smith, but it is as much those around him just looking like little boy lost, than the halves.

I personally dont think we will be able to make effective judgements till next season. The coach will be able to select the training plans to get the players at a level of fitness he deems necessary to play to his style. He should also have time to work on the basic skills such as how to kick and how to pass and then as the season starts, introduce various moves.

Man for man Huddersfield are miles ahead of us. It would only be a missed opportunity if somehow we had beat them and it would be their missed opportunity.its not 1999 again, we have probably the worst team on paper bar Widnes

Regards

King James

I think we were poor on Friday and I agree with some of the above comments that we do not look much different at the moment from the KC days. Yes its gonna take time with a new coach and all that but Id like to see Holbrook experiment with the rest of the season with a few of the younger players, I believe he has a reputation for nurturing/developing the youth so I d like see the likes of Richardson etc given some more game time. He played against Widnes for a sort spell when he took Roby off and put Fage in at Hooker and Richardson into the halves then the next week he drops Richardson and we get the same crappy Smith performance. He is giving likes of grace and Knowles a chance so why not the rest, nothing to loss really.....

Oh and does anyone else think Brough should have at least been sin binned for his 'confrontation' with Wilkin?

Def not, Wilkin should have done 10 mins. These wind up players try their best to get under Broughy`s skin and get him to serve time, I think such actions are testament to Broughy`s skill level.

Having watched the highlights even though we reputedly played poorly, i thought our trys were all well executed with good handling.

Thats to me shows that something is being worked on.

The main thing would appear to be consistency in their ability to time passes and run good angles.