Good Huddersfield defence, poor Warrington attack, both?

Could an attendee please give their comments?

Please, no Smith is crap, the wheels are coming off, etc.

Wouldn't mind seeing some stats from today sounded like we dropped alot of ball.

Fundamentally the biggest problem was our failure to complete sets and retain the ball. I think they must have only completed one set in the second half.

Worryingly one or two bad habits are creeping back into the play again, for instance our reaction to the transition from a breakdown in an attack or the attack-defence transition after a kick for field position is very poor.

In addition it was fairly clear that one or two of our players were playing with injuries.

With the semi-final in mind we look bang out of form whilst Wigan have now won four on the bounce.

Both really. Hudds defended well and our attack was awful, i wouldn't like to see our completion rate. Lots and lots of dropped ball!

The whole thing has done a 180 its us with the injuries and bad form now.

Very poor through out apart from thr first 10 minutes. Time's it felt like it was one man play. Very stop and start in the second half, no flow at all. Jono had a STINKER ! Dragged into touch, droped ball etc ...
Still hungover after loss to St's.
Seen ALOT better

It all looked promising within the first ten minutes. But after piling on so much pressure, failing to score and then conceding the first try in the way we did, there was only going to be one winner.

There was too much dropped ball on their line in the first ten and afterwards. Conceding a penalty gave them 30/40 metres from the kick every time, but we conceded too many.

I though Brett Hodgson was superb. He was on the end of almost every offload and created outrageous passes that gave the wingers space to run on kick returns. Our kicking game was nothing short of diabolical.
Eorl Crabtree was a thorn in our side as soon as he got on. Not one player in defence had the guts to put a shot on him like Morley did last year. He would not have had half a good a game if we had closed him down early.

Not sure how much we can blame injuries, it was a first team out there today. Does Harrison still count as a second stringer?

probably count him as in the middle, still not much experience.

morley,higham,rauhihi,vinnie,hicks,grix are all first teamers though who didn't play. not sure if there are any others.

btw, im not blaming injuries we played awful and did not deserve anything from the game.

Wigan might have won 4 on the bounce but were poor today in grinding out a win against a marginally worse Bradford side. Possibly a good sign for us though that we can win ugly, and in poor conditions especially in the first half.

We're not without our injuries either - Lockers, McIlorum, Smith, also Bailey limped off today after about half an hour.

It looked like Clarke (for sure) and King (maybe) were in the team but were carrying injuries. Briers wasn't moving all that freely either but was still probably our best player.

Clarke was not training beforehand, I was very surprised to see him on the bench.

Interesting to see what Smith does with players carrying injuries with only two games till the semi only one of which you could really see us winning.

Got into the twenty and looked clueless. Couldnt turn that early field postion into points so when Hudds scored heads went down.

Coughed up too much ball and made silly decisions like going to the wing near the half way line early in the tackle count and getting dragged into touch. Failry obvious that was going to happen on a wet pitch.

We really miss Moz bursting down the middle of the park. Nobody is standing up and leading the team.

I can see this being a similar end to that of our previous seasons.

Carney impressed me. Hes safe as houses and showed good pace for his try.

Can people stop singing Wembley songs its cringeworthy, even more so with how we are playing at the moment.

to all the ladies and gentlemen off this board who LAUGHED and took the mickey out of our loss the other night.
at least we can blame pathetic goalkicking for our loss.
much better than a pathetic team...i thank you one and all..

Sounds like you were listening to our game with a box of kleenex next to you, Rigsby.

What happened when the final hooter went? Did you have your own rising damp?

thanks for that miss jones..

Every team has its injuries as thats the nature of the game especially in recent years where the impact has got greater and the pace quicker, these are all professional players and like Sally points out some of our players are no longer inexperienced.

To me its the old ways creeping back in, ive said on many occasion that Tony Smith will need 3 years to sort this club out, we have players in key positions that are not upto it in my opinion, you need high class players and possible match winners in the key pivot positions.

Look at Saints, they have Wellens who has been a rock down the years at full back and over the years he has scored quite a few tries due to his support play and great reading of the game, both Sean Long and Leon Pryce have been match winners for saints down the years and then you have Cunningham and Roby, at 13 they have had Sculthorpe and now Chris Flannery who is also a very good 13.

Leeds have the likes of Brent Webb who is a match winner by himself and he does a great job of being an extra half back when Leeds have the ball, they have had a steady combination of Rob Burrow and Danny McGuire in the half backs and both are consistent threats in different ways. Matt Diskin has been one of the most improved players in SL over the years and he consistently gains them a lot of yards from dummy half then they have Danny Buderus. At 13 they have had Kevin Sinfield during most of their glory years and he is a natural leader and a great goal kicker, they have been able to rotate that when Gareth Ellis was at Leeds when Sinfield moved to dummy half before Buderus arrived.

In comparison our pivots are Richie Mathers who is a big improvement on Stuart Reardon, i would describe him as fairly solid rather than being spectacular and i wouldn`t describe him as a potential match winner. In the halves we have Lee Briers who in my opinion is very inconsistent which has been a pattern of our club over the years and he reflects everything that is good and bad about us, personally i wouldn`t have given him a new 1 year deal and i would have looked for as change of direction.

At present we have no scrum half, Michael Monaghan has proven over time his short comings at 7 and Jon Clarke to me is a utility player who his handy in a few positions but you wouldn`t say he is high class in any.

Micky Higham is a fair enough impact hooker to have as he has proven over the years that he can turn games and if Michael Monaghan is to start at hooker next year then in my opinion thats an improvement on a combination of Clarke/Higham.

Loose forward is where we struggle as well, their is no great link to the backs and no ball handling player of any noter. Vinnie Anderson is far too inconsistent and only seems to turn up when were getting on top of teams, some of the saints fans eluded to that before we signed him. Ben Harrison is a player of great potential but he is no ball playing loose forward, he isn`t a natural runner and distributor. I would see his long term position as either 2nd row or prop.

If Richie Myler has been signed then thats a good support player we will have that has an excellent short kicking game, i wouldn`t say he is a natural distributor and he isn`t a scrum half that likes to take the line on in a way that Rob Burrow does or in the way we seen Kyle Eastmond did recently against us, Richie Myler reminds me a lot of how Shaun Edwards used to play where he would always be in support on the shoulder of the man carrying the ball.

We also need a strong running 2nd rower that is capable of scattering tacklers with a great pair of hans, Ali Lauitiiti has been doing this for years at Leeds, Anthony Watmough is another player that is a good example of this, Ben Creagh is another who can create something from nothing, to some extent Gareth Hock minus the stupidity was another player that could do this. We have no 2nd rower thats capable of anywhere near the above, if only we had a young Mark Roberts on our books.

We have a lot to sort out in my opinion, maybe its the honeymoon period that has been carrying us through recent games where a change has refreshed the players, as a few posters have already stated especially the ones that went to Celtic where they said we were basically awful and reapeat of those sort of errors would see us lose to saints, todays game sounds no different where we apparently made numerous errors just like we did against saints, we have been getting away with the errors in the so called lesser games as those sort of teams won`t usually punish you, in form and better quality teams will punish you and show up your short comings.

Lost against the leaders at home and 3rd place away, hardly the end of the world, think how we all felt mid march? It's going to take time to fully trun us around, SMith still has to get rid of bad habits before he can teach good ones.

I left after 70 mins, I asked to leave after ten by had my request refused. It was up there with the most depressing away days that I can remember. I'm hard pressed to find a positive really.

First ten minutes, given some great field position, on the back of four penalties. We forced passes, we kicked into touch on the second tackle, we went left & right, left & right, no runners, forwards at acting half, just bad really. Classic Warrington, it looked rushed, frantic almost. I thought under Smith we've been getting better at going through a set, nothing wrong with trying force a repeat set, building pressure, all that. Not today, it was all nervy stuff.

Some cringeworthy performances, if Johnson was a horse he'd have been shot. It's cruel on my eyes watching him. Greasy pitches and he's heading for the touchline and all that, sorry, not good enough. The lack of pace in the backline, the lack of spark is a real worry, the sooner they find a way of getting Bridge back to three the better, the better for everyone, I thought he did his best today, but having Johnson & Carney as a combination, just lacks legs, no threat.

Huddersfield looked miles quicker, killed us around the play of the ball, did everything at pace, and found holes at will. An eight point defeat flatters us really. Some of the decision making of our players given the conditions was laughable, ball security was terrible. It just wasn't a good day at the office.

The only positive i've found is that we only got beat by 18. Under Cull, when we were naff, it was 50 minimum, at least we have a bit more backbone now, that's it really.

did you go the same school as cullen?

#

Nobody could have gone to the same school as cullen

I think that's a fairly good report, though thought Robinson should have score but for the late high tackle which Smith should have banded his yellow card.

I was really concerned in the first 10-15 as you havd alot of the ball thanks to some silly penalties we gave away, but when you failed to score and Jackson coming on which gave us that extra spark, never mind Eorl, I thought we controlled pretty much the rest of the match.

The late Carney try made the scores look reasonable.

Harrison has played in more games than Grix.

Johnson put his hand up to play, Adam Neal was about to come in for him at the last hour. Clarke hasn't been fully fit for a while with a knee injury, a few other bangs and bumps. That's just Rugby League.