Wigan of the 80s where a prime example of what consistency means. Something I’m sure will never be matched. However back to the now and its all about Leeds and St Helens.

How long has these two been in the top two?

Wigan coming third to Leeds and Saints in the play offs there’s still a gulf. One off games in the season and challenge cup then anyone’s for the taking really. Hats off to that

Please note this post has been book marked!!!

I felt tonights game smacked of the wigan we new last season they got into a good winning lead and slowly chucked it away in the second half.Take nothing away from bradford though for a brilliant fight back.

Why

Even as a proud saints fan, i hope this comes back to bite him on the bum.

Having lived through and watched us since the 2nd division days, I can promise you that even then we still lost our share of matches, a lot of them unexpectedly, poor performances, drops in consistency. There's only really the 87 season that stands out from a league perspective, but even then we lost against Wire home and away, and got knocked out of the challenge cup by Oldham (what a horrible freezing depressing night that was), and the centenary season in 95/96 (but that was only 20 games, and included an away loss to you and a shocking away loss at Oldham).

I think you maybe need to revisit reality mate.

Reality hurts for me.

I look in the mirror, crack it and shards come flying at me.

You say that like he's had any grasp of reality in the past. [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXgadS_1Z9kEXAMPLE[/url

Oh sweet lord.

You're a deeply troubled person

We simpily didnt follow the gameplan in the second half and our execution was poor.

Prescott, Mossop and Phelps in for me next week.

Feka, Goulding & Bailey out.

Riddell cost us with some poor errors in defence tonight as well, hopefully he will be given the rounds in training this week.

I mentioned in another thread that i thought the substitutions were odd today, in that some players were given extended gametime whilst others (Deacon and feka notably) got very little. Both Fielden and Riddell suffered from this imo and looked out on their feet at the end, Fielden was beaten easily twice in plays that lead directly to Bradford tries.

For me, even worse than losing the game was to blow a 20 point lead. As someone's already said, this was the way we were last year. One problem was that other teams always knew we were beat-able, no matter how big a lead we ran up early in the game. Let's hope this is a a one-off.

It was also worrying that in the second half when Bradford closed down our forwards and denied us field position, we didn't seem to have any answers and we lost some shape, in both defence and attack.

I thought Bradford were terrific in the second half and completely out-enthused us. But I was a bit disappointed at the lack of on-field leadership when we were under pressure.

Lesson learned (I hope)

Had we come out in the second half with the right mentality we'd have won, we instead came out thinking the win was in the bag and played accordingly.

All though I'm disappointed we lost, it was only through taking are eye off the ball and relaxing.

The kick up the back side we needed me thinks.

Riddell went after his best mate got suckered in and in my opinion lost us the match, he was superb until Hall got on the pitch.

I cannot understand what Feka did wrong, ran well, set up a try. Best game of the year for me from Feka friendlies aside.

Yeah, they were, Deacon didnt get on until the second half.

I think that we have lessons to learn with regards subs after tonight, and if Feka is still unable to offer more, he needs more time in the reserves.

I thought Feka had a good game when he was on. I'd rather leave him there next week instead of Prescott.

Agree about Riddell, but still thought we looked better with him at the ptb rather than Leulai.

But surely once getting done was enough, and imo its a stretch to say he was superb.



Which says alot about how poor he has been. He missed tackles and didnt really offer quick play the ball or offload. For me, he is clearly learning how to play his new weight, but maybe some reserve game time will help that.

The thing is with Feka, I'm not his biggest fan by any stretch but I don't see what he's doing wrong. I felt he gave us good go forward tonight, made his tackles and was no more noticeably knackered than anyone else but was given hardly any time. If they're going to pull him on poor performances, they should at least give him sufficient gametime to put that right when he's back in the side.

His defence has been superb this year a few times tonight he got bounced off fair play but non of them lead to anything. As for failing to generate a quick play the ball, we must have been watching a different game. Found his front every time generated quick play the ball on most occasions and on 1 occasions set up a try from his quick play the ball.

But for me, he didnt make as many yards going forward and he did miss tackles.

I personally feel he isnt getting time because they don't like what he is doing within the game.

I may be wrong though, I will watch it back and recomment if needed, but for me, Feka has plenty work to do.

Perhaps we were, or watching it through a different pint glass



I wasnt happy with what I saw from him, however I agree this year he has been very good in terms of defence, but his attack hasnt done it for me yet.

His defence was not as good as it has been tonight but was still better than last year, his attack was very good for me tonight.

Thought the injury to Carmont was a turning point too, meant we were unable to rotate the backrow as usual if they were tiring or underperforming, and took Joel away from a lot of the action.