Too soon to be worrying guys, not had your strongest team out and it was always going to take a while to click properly. Better that way anyway, no good starting like a house on fire then tailing off with no momentum at the end of the season. Hansen was a monster for you tonight and Fages looks quality, great for you that he will be back up when Chase is back. Lucky sods. ha

You'll win the competition because Phil Clarke said so. At least you will do okay financially unlike Nobles ex clubs ! Buy buy buy and you won't fail.

I thought we played okay considering the quality of players missing from our line-up. Certainly an improvement on last week, which is all I was looking for. Fifty percent after four isn't bad at this stage for a new team.

As for the armchair experts from other Clubs who only seem to appear when we lose, they were always going to happen this season. Just remember not to feed them.

Have faith boys ignore most of the other fans! Its a slow working process can't just put together 14 new players basically and expect to hit the ground running! Last night we matched Widnes i thought they just were a little quicker then us around the ruck this however is a concern!

Have I missed Koukash criticising Widnes in some way in the past? Both the fans and club seem completely obsessed with him.

Best team won last night. I'd say that we only played near our potential for about 20 minutes. It's all well and good putting in some spectacular defensive hits, but pointless if the general structure goes to pieces every 10 minutes and a yawning gap opens up.

For me one word...Howarth.

How we've let Gaz Owen go out on loan I cannot understand, too many mistakes and too slow around the ruck, this is definately an area we need to improve on, we either have to bring in some one to compliment Lee or bring Owen back.

Hansen was outstanding and as someone mentioned didnt deserve to be on the losing side, we also look better when Moz starts.

Feel we are missing the killer instinct and flare to break the line at the momnet, its a long road ahead, only 4th competive game together as a team and weve been missing our star man for almost the 4.

I think a few young additions to the squad would make all the difference, I'd give the Walne brothers a chance.

Too many of the forwards are prone to injury and playing heavily strapped, McPherson, Puletua and Rapira looks like an amubulence case to me, not played in nearly 12 months has 2 starts for us and injured again, could end up being a real damp squid which is a shame as he looked quite a handy player before his injury in the NRL.

So we were beaten, there was a big improvement from last week and yet again we picked up injures at crucial times in the game.
The referee if you can call him that made some interesting calls.(the Dr made his thoughts heard at the end picked up by sky ).
The team will take some hart out of the game, a lot of reds fans will be having a go at the team but like they say they need time ,a lot of disruption with injures has not helped but our time will come at the right end of the season, let’s all stay with them as good times are just around the corner.

When is the man of steel 2011 due back?

I agree refn hooker and smith is also too slow and seems past it
Fages seems the part though
Those are the games you need to win to hit the play offs

No word yet, but interestingly it could be the Cas game.

i thought tommy lee had a really good game. lots of question marks around the signing of lee but has been 1 of the better players

You mean you don't like anything that could reduce Saints' standing in the game? Little clubs like Salford should just know their place, eh?



1) We're four games in with a 50% win ratio. Calm down.
2) You only need one exclamation mark. Calm down.

Defensively we always looked frail last night, especially when the ball went out wide. Too many missed / non-attempted tackles. Going forward we just seemed to have no spark or creativity. The biggest worry, though, was the body language. Even when we'd just scored two quick drives the players had their heads down and didn't look up for it. Low on confidence, maybe?

Not time to panic yet, although the next three games do worry me. We just need a bit of spark, hopefully players returning from injury can help provide that.

Once rangi returns you'll score plenty. All the preaseason Tim smith will have been working with rangi, so for him to be missing is throwing a spanner in the works (not that faces is doing bad) but RC is the main man, he's the turkey in your Xmas dinner, the beef in your burger, the toffee on your pudding...and you've had him for 20 mins so far????

*fages.

I can't see what Noble sees in Howarth over Owen either, or why he deems him good enough to start the match. Unfortunately as you Salford fans are probably now aware Noble is very much a coach who has his favourites and those favourites will always play unless injured. Sadly for Salford, Howarth seems to be one of those favourites, and I agree with you that he isn't SL standard. Add to that that he is only playing at hooker as he is physically and skilfully not up to playing stand-off or loose forward and it only makes his selection over an actual hooker worse.

Over the next couple of years Noble will be capable of stabilising you as a 6th to 8th place finishing club and can get you to the latter stages of the cup but you will have to put up with him always choosing his favourites for as long as he is there. Going off your performances so far you seem more destined for 8th to 10th this year rather than 6th to 8th though and if that happens you may not have to put up with Noble's favouritism for that long.

On the bright side the academy had a good win showing some really good prospects for the future. Well done lads.

Strange comment. I was under the impression that the salary cap was there to introduce level playing field as well as stopping clubs going bust.

Saints ain't the team campaigning to abolish the cap and introduce marquee player rules. We believe the future of the game is to Develop youth not to sign 17 superstars from all over the world.


We also didn't vote to scrap the u21s to save £30k a year like Salford.

Hi Chaps Leigh fan here.

I thought it was a great game and a fantastic advert for Super League,

Harrison Hansen was best player on the pitch tonight and ran himself into the ground for 80 mins and looks to be by far your best signing, young Johnson on the wing also showed up well and reminds me of Jason Robinson.

I thought the obvious poor tactic from Noble was the consistent "drop off" pass from the first receiver, the attacking line just looked disjointed and never looked like threatening the Widnes edges.

I Think you will come good though, I like the Doc, I think you threw the ball about much slicker when Sean Long was with you though.

Chins up, your in a much better state than this time last year!

I watched the game on the box last night and it to me is very apparent that we look shockingly low on attacking set plays (maybe due to chase being out but you'd have thought that Theo would be up to speed on them being the first deputy for them both) Smith's drop off ball is so telegraphed it's not that far removed from a hospital ball.

While I'm not a fan of him being in the squad for reasons I've stated before if your going to have someone with the pace of Johnson then you need to utilise his speed, chips over the top must surely be a good option occasionally.

We need to involve Mullaney more in attack ala Patton, we saw with his footwork for Theo's try that he has no little skill in areas other than at the back.

Howarth I'm sorry is now just getting found out, Lee (while most like me didn't see him as the best option to buy in at hooker) offers so much more skill a ruck speed, either try ad get Lee to play 80 minutes or bring one of the younger kids through. And the flop in the first half was the laziest piece of rugby I've seen in an age.

A couple of positives for me was how good Walton looked when he played in the second row, think if ever needed he'd make an excellent #13 and that S'au looks to have trimmed down from the first game and looked eager for the ball, just hope his shoulder injury is nothing serious.

I'm just hoping that Rapira and S'au are fit for next Friday as we are starting to look seriously light on bodies.

yeah we'd just lost mate - doh !!!

Hello Leigh fan.

All very fair comments. Hopefully, the lack of attacking flair is mostly a timing issue, and will improve as the players get used to each other. In that respect, the chopping and changing of the team due to injuries can't be helping. Things are getting pretty bad on that front, and we're having to play players from other clubs who are currently under treatment for a serious eye injury. According to photo and caption in the print edition of this week's Advertiser, Sean Gleeson took a big hit off Saints last week while playing for Salford.

Will we have anyone fit for Friday? Sa’u, Rapira, Mullaney, Tasi, Howarth and Hansen all looked like they picked up injuries of some form or other. Hopefully none of them are too serious as we’re pretty light on numbers as it is.

On reflection of last night we did ok in the middle, our pack was on top for large parts of the game, but we looked clueless in attack. There was no understanding at all between the half backs and for all Theo’s effort, scrambling around, backing up and picking up loose balls etc he didn’t push the team around the park enough - saying that he was the miles better than Smith. Tim Smith was poor again and his kicking game was woeful. Greg Johnson kept us in the game single handily in the first half with 3 try saving tackles and an absolutely outstanding individual try. Hansen ran his blood to water and put in some huge hits, but what disappointed me is, when he put a huge hit on someone in the first half the fans lifted, but the players didn’t respond at all, a hit like that should have sent shockwaves around the rest of the team and got them pumped, it didn’t! And if anyone needed anymore reason as to why I don’t think Howarth is up to it, look no further than yesterday, he was awful! Scapegoat? Nah he’s just crap. Morley and Tasi were good and I like the look of Mullaney. Williams was busy and got through plenty of work I just think we need a little bit more quality. Another major plus was Jason Walton, he was outstanding when he came on.

Anyway – we’ll get there, I think. We need Chase back asap, difficult to say I know, but I think we could have won the game if Chase was playing yesterday.

The only excitement of the first half - apart from the other try - and the individual try from Johnson,of an attacking piece of play,was the kick by Mullaney,which saw Johnson do a startling impression of a speeding bullet,which resulted in the GLDO.
The tactic was never repeated in the second half - which,of course,was lost.

We managed to lose all the second halfs last year when Stu Howarth was not around to be the scapegoat.

Poor display notwithstanding some atrocious decision making by Silverwood.

Oh right, so did the salary cap prevent Bradford going into admin and Salford and London very nearly going bust but for the intervention of new owners?

'Level playing field'. In other words a status quo. The salary caps works really well when a star studded squad (Leeds) can sign a would be challengers best player (Briscoe).

In your own words 'strange comment'

Biggest disappointment has to be Smith. He looks completely out of his depth and I really cant see him getting any better when Chase returns with his 'unpredictable' plays. Mullaney looks good, S'au looked unfit. It really says a lot when Jason Walton looked the most dangerous player in the team. All in all, Widnes looked like a TEAM, Salford didn't!!!!!!