Unlike following the Ryan Bailey legitimate tackle?

depends. can be excrutiating but depends. A couple of weeks rest can fix it

Your ribcage 'rippling' whilst driving though is perhaps one of the scariest things I've experienced

I think Saints should have had at least a warning though with next offence going in the bin. But I suspect they know how far to push with a specific referee and then ease off at that threshold.

Would that have made a difference?...maybe but probably not. Faasavalu and Puletua were immense and changed the momentum and in the end the class showed. Pity as we looked really good for the first 20

Mine always does that, unless its my stomach of course...

Perhaps I was watching a different tackle but the shot by Eastmond seemed really bad, like he was really trying to knock someones head off. I stand to be corrected if I see the incident again on video but at the time I thought it was a 100% red card.

Oh, hi by the way.

We can and have played beter this year. We can and have played worse. taking the average of the year so far, you'd have to say that the score was pretty much what you'd expect if both teams had an average day and so it came to pass. Saints ironically took the record off us of most away wins on the spin, and bearing in mind that that's their 16th (?) consecutive away win, it hardly counts as a disgrace. Plus we won at their place so it's a better record v. Saints than most teams will end up with.

Morrison's injury was a huge blow for us. And we will miss him v. Leeds too. This in turn disrupted the available substitutions and is one reason why we ran out of steam faster than Saints.

Until Morrison went off it was a very close contest, although we were in front, and both teams displayed some cracking rugby. The only disappointment was that we couldn't put more on the board when we had all that pressure, and I also couldn't believe that we took the two at that stage. Crazy decision. If we had scored then, or indeed if the disallowed 'try' had stood, it could well have ended up a different game -but we'll never know. personally, though, I thought that on the day, enough of Saints players displayed enough of their best form that they would have beaten us whatever we did, so I'm not too disappointed, they have the overall edge in playing personnel and we needed Morrison and everyone manning the pumps.

Deacon was much better than of late and some of the positional kicking (not all of it) was very good, though why he never tries to make any appreciable distance with penalty kicks to touch remains a mystery, it's almost as if he thinks the extra 20 yards we could get is unimportant.

It was a stifling hot day down on the pitch and it's no surprise that with Morrison off, menzies ended up struggling with the work he was asked to do but I thought he had another very good game. I was worried about Burgess though and can only think he was injured somewhere in the first half as he was spending a lot of time resting behind the play and seemed more shattered than what he was doing in the match would justify.

Whilst making allowances for Morrison's disappearance, and also it being Saints, still the biggest disappointment for me was the way we defended in Saints' purple patch from 25 minutes. Sure when they throw it about like that they will score some against anyone but not conceding points quite as cheaply as that. We have had these defensive collapses before, still at least this time it was a decent team piling on the points in rapido order, not some mugs.

No argument with the refereeing though I was disappointed with the sheer number of head shots and grapples from Saints, they need to cut this out from their game, half the team was at it. No arguments with the key decisions, presumably could have gone either way but the officials were near by and called what they saw so that's fine by me. I would call it a fine example of critical bits of luck, though, like our 40-20 attempt that took a sharp left to stay in play, and Saints' relieving kick for touch and a scrum on our 20, which instead took a sharp right and put Halley under pressure. Rub of the green etc.

No idea of the stats but off the top of my head I reckon both sides made a similar number of mistakes, and our ball security was OK overall, and our discipline was decent too.

Shame the game went simply true to form, but it did, and I'm not too disheartened. You need some things to go your way to beat Saints when you're in our position, and on this occasion they didn't.

Pretty fair assessment FA. IMO we just couldn't cope with their impact players and were hamstrung by injuries to at least two forwards.

You need to change your sig.



* edit *

Damn! Too late!

Er, or not, since we are one of the few teams that have, or indeed will have, the distinction of slaying the Saints this year - on their own pitch.

Having said which - my rolling sig has, as ever, rolled on.

I know a Dave Smith.

Is he also a Wigan fan with an alias?

Not that I know of. But he did once do a woodpecker survey which I sent a sighting of a lesser spotted woodpecker to.

It's rubbish White lightening is stronger and a nice scrumpy tastes better.

I bought 6 bottles of organic cider from Booths last week. Took them to a party on Friday night. After the first 3 someone pointed out they were 7.2%, followed by a few Czech lagers & a few glasses of wine it explained why my triathlon preparations were hindered by me trying to avoid puking it all back up in Ilkley baths the next morning.

It did seem to me when we took the 2 points that we were losing momentum, running out of ideas and if anything were looking less likely to score the longer we had the ball. I could understand the decision to take the 2 points since if we had come away with nothing, as was starting to look likely, it would have been an even bigger setback.

It did seem to me when we took the 2 points that we were losing momentum, running out of ideas and if anything were looking less likely to score the longer we had the ball. I could understand the decision to take the 2 points since if we had come away with nothing, as was starting to look likely, it would have been an even bigger setback.

How were we looking less likely to score? We already had 14 on the board which was a high socring rate against Saints. Plus it was not all about scoring, if we kept them pinned back and defending set after set it was as good as a score at that stage?

I'm not sure how you're losing momentum when you are on or near the opponent's try line?

just as a matter of intrest about the ref,,
err,,wasnt the penalty count 11 to 5 for the bulls?.

And quite rightly. I'm surprised it was not more, its a wonder how Saints had 13 players on the pitch for the whole game really. Their discipline was appalling.

It's a real shame that Deacon had that try disallowed, he seems to be improving on his pis$ poor performances and that could have given him the confidence to build on that.

Apologies if this has already been covered, I haven't read all the threads. But I absolutely disagreed with the decision to disallow that try. The so-called "knock on" looked backwards from where I was.

The thing that has thrown me the most was that any contact from a Bradford was in the field of play. Yet a 20 metre tap was awarded which seems to suggest the IGJ has ruled that it was infact Deacon knocked on grounding the ball.

I was disappointed too. Anderson made us a clean team, with just the usual suspects occasionally costing us (Wilkin, Fas and Cunningham with his open arm hug like tackle). My guess is Potter won't say anything about it because he isn't exactly known for being disciplined. However, I hope someone makes him say it because it isn't a good way to play at all.

Well as long they get away with it, they aint going to change are they?

That's not the point. I think it was last season, a few of our players went through an embarrassing phase (for me anyway) of crowding the ref. No punishments were handed out. But it suddenly stopped. Why? Because Anderson said so (no doubt in conjunction with the Saints management). Saints don't need refs to do anything about it although of course I for one wouldn't object if they did; they need the bosses at the club to do something about it before it gets to that, which I hope they will (although in Potter I have no faith in this area).