This guy needs the sack, no clue in attack, poor in defense and again no kicking game, if we had two half decent half-backs playing behind that pack last night we would have scored 40.
To interested in yapping at the ref and shouting orders when he should be helping out the team.

didn't get injured in training or the warm up though.

Not the point, people on here bang on and on about how great he is and last night he never done a tap the same as every other game.

He was poor last night and god only knows where his kicking game has gone. It also doesn't help that we have a scrum half who can't kick.

Are you saying he was the only player to have a poor game?

And who doesn't seem capable of actually being a scrum half.

I think Briers is the reason you have underachived in the past few years, you seem to have replaced or developed all your other players in other positions except for Briers - I was gutted, thought you had them last night!

No Ive just started a thread about Penny, Monaghan was poor aswell but we haven't had to put up with him for 10 years.

Prepare to be lynched by the sheep for daring to suggest that Saint Lee isn't up to the job

TBH I didn't think his kicking was a problem. Especially in the first half, Saints started almost every set in their own 10m zone.

2nd half we made no yards and hardly got to the 5th anyway!

He certainly wasn't the worst half out there last night.

when he was a saint he was up to the job. World class in fact

its just that you guys have ruined him.

I'm not sure about that - As soon as Goulding's suspension was up McRae immediately dropped him.

I agree totally.

My one if you like criticism, would be the play where we kicked across to Penny. I thought his execution was poor there at a key time in the game. Penny had alot of space, and Briers had a pretty big area to land that kick and overcooked it, I thought at the time "He's better than that". He could have easily floated it straight into Pennys hands, it wasn't a massive 'pressure play'.

Maybe, but I think we have been spoilt with that in the past in that he makes that skill look particularly easy. It wasn't a million miles off coming off anyway.

i thought Briers' kicking game was pretty good, especially in the first half. I'm surprised no one has mentioned that he played entirely on the left hand side last night rather than the normal right. I thought it was a masterstroke by Lowes at first as Saints kept attacking where they expected him to be. We should have switched him back to the right at some poin though as he's more comfortable passing left to right.

Yeah, I highlighted that in another thread. One thing about the channel system that fans seem to hate, we scored plenty of tries with it.

When you were coasting and looked on the way to winning the game, how many of these players needed sacking

Yes you got beat by a saints team who simply got on a roll like only they can, but if its any consolation i think you will be in the mix at the buisness end of the season

I am going to stick up for Briers here. I am a critic of Briers but I thought he had a decent game. Like most of the others for 50 minutes he played great.

He put little kicks in close to the line aimed at the defenders legs that caused havoc. he turned Wellens around a couple of times (I think from one of his kicks we actually forced a drop out)

I have not seen the TV Coverage of the game and that might show something different but it looked to me that our game plan did not involve a great amount of involvement from the half backs.

Briers, because he still done nothing when we were coasting, it was all the forwards work.

but when the forwards are on the back foot like after 50 mins last night theirs nothing halfbacks can do. we simpley run out of steam! AGAIN icon_sad.gif

Agreed but we had the chances in the first half, the forwards got us to the line and scored the try's but they cant do everything, we needed the backs to come to life on the saints 20 and there was nothing from them.

I disagree.

What did he do? Ive seen Ronny Biggs make more breaks.

Agreed. The question though is, was that due to saints' defence, an inability of the backs to do it, or coaching instruction to play a conservative game?

My suspicion is that the game plan was conservative - I definitely feel that the team as a whole should have made much more of the territorial advantage and possession that they had.

Quite clearly, James Lowes has, as expected, followed the 'Bradford method' of a big, dominant, yet mobile and quite skillful pack. Briers did what was asked of him and sat back and directed the team around the pitch. For the majority of time, he only came into play at the back of attacking sets.
The gameplan was very much 'one-out' forward play, which doesn't leave much for Briers to do, but I thought what he did do, he did well.