That was truly awful and proves a point how far Saints are ahead of us (and the rest of the league), this was however the case last season and last month and they came away with nothing. Let’s see how they cope with the pressure 2 weeks tomorrow.

We were awful with lots to fix.

However I think Saints just played their best 80 mins of rugby for the season and I can’t see them being able replicate that in the final.

All tonight has done as further nailed on the ‘over whelming favourites’ tag which we all know makes Saints knees wobble.

Saints where always getting to the final and tonight has piled on all that more pressure for the big choke.

That was men against toddlers tonight. Not helped by ZERO line speed in defence. One step and stop and let their forwards get up a head of steam. Compare how they were in our faces all the time. Basic stuff.

The warning signs were there last week when Mossop and Dodson looked like world beaters because we constantly let them run onto us and didn’t go and meet them. Hopefully Isa finds a pair of boots with studs as he spent most of the game on his backside. Although after that performance he loses his place to Greenwood.

I'd put French at FB and Hardaker at centre.
Smithies to start and Navarette for Clubb.
May not be enough but can't be worse than tonight.
Williams also owes us one after tonight.
Think Friday will be a real tense affair and wouldn't surprise me if Salford do us.
Time for the senior pros to step up.

French needs a full pre-season to get into our systems, it was always expected he would play on the bench. He only came over early due to visa reasons. Lam has made that explicitly clear in every interviews

Can’t blame Williams. He was being asked to produce try scoring opportunities from his own 30 - which he did a couple of times. Not to mention he spent most game doing the jobs of our pack who were only getting back by tackle 3.

Interception try and omitting to pass to Marshall says otherwise for.
I'm a Wiliams fan but for me tonight he was poor by his standards.
By the way I blame all the players but only a minority have the talent to change a game.
Beaten tonight by a far superior team but the senior players let themselves down tonight and I'm hoping they will respond accordingly

They probably wont play that well at OT but even if they drop off by 20% they will be far too good for that team.

I am not sure the senior lads have got it in them! Flower and Lockers look a shadow of the players they were, Clubb is simply not good enough. Sarge will play and we need him. Unless our defensive line speed improves we will not win next week, never mind at OT. Our defence has been good over the past few months but just when we needed to perform that deserted us as well. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to win a game were you miss so many tackles and make so few yards.

Wouldn't worry too much about Clubb, he's got a ban coming for the next game!

"Too late!", they cried.

This made me chuckle

Embarrassing thread. One minute we are praising our young forwards (Smithies tackling record, Partington/Byrne aggression) and a week later it's the worst forward performance in our history.

No lack of effort from our boys. They were just thoroughly outplayed from the first second of the game. Saints produced the best 40 minutes of RL I've seen this year. We were up for it, not shy of any effort but Saints were red hot and blew us away, which we all knew if they played like they can do that would happen. Credit the opposition.

Salford next week will be tough.

Pretty poor performance but I don't read too much into it saints were red hot tonight I also don't think you could beat them twice leaving the gf for the one to win.

Im not saying that you lost deliberately but I would not be so worried. Saints will go into the gf maybe a bit overconfidant? I can imagine saints would want salford in gf over you lot still.

Exactly this. I sat back at half time and said sometimes you just have to tip your hat and say well done to the opposition. That was a fantastic display of RL and in that form Saints would have given anybody a good hiding.
I actually thought Clubb’s challenge was fair. He was committed to the challenge and no way he could pull out. He also tried to wrap his arms around so not a shoulder charge. No issues for me.

If he doesn't, he may get in trouble for putting undue pressure on the ankle of Percival in the 13th minute.

I said the same to two guys in the queue for the ale at half time. Saints went 39 minutes without making a mistake and played some decent stuff so sometimes it just is how it is.
Clubb has become a passenger and even playing with injuries it is hard not to be critical of his performances. Nowt wrong with the challenge

I have got to disagree with the effort statement. We stood back and let them run at us rather than meeting them close to the ptb. Line speed was woeful. To allow the likes of Tompson 10 meters plus meters after the tackle was criminal, it had the hallmarks of a game lost before kickoff. The deficiencies in the squad have been obvious all season but the nature of our defence has gone some way to covering for that, tonight just exposed the problem. What do we tell the little uns in training? Get in his face and stop him gaining momentum. That is what Saints did to us and in return we ended up on our backsides time and time again.

I know players should play for pride but once the game gad gone it must be in the back if their minds that they have another chance next week.


The final will be different again

Not sure how you work that out, assuming you're referring to the late hit. It's just a penalty. Not a shoulder charge, not high, he was committed but it's high force after the ball has gone hence the penalty. The video ref would have come in if it had been any more.

See my previous reply, above.

Fair enough Levrier. I think the effort was there, it just wasn't smart. We were flying out the line and trying to put in big shots, but the footwork of Thompson in particular was too clever for it. That left big gaps, low numbers in the tackles for him to chew up metres. We didn't get into the Saints half for 35 minutes and that saps your energy & second half it would appear "a lack of effort" but it wasn't (for me anyway) we had just been outplayed. Saints were at 90% completion and made one error towards the end of the first half. Perfect RL.

We needed to play smart. Slow the game down. Kicks into touch. Play them out wide and stretch them left to right as opposed to trying to tackle their pack. When we pushed it out wide we scored. If they are flying out the line, kick in behind and turn them around. We were never in a million years going to match their pack.

That's my take on it.

Just watched it again to make sure it's how I remember it. Percival puts himself in a dangerous position by trying to spin round and fall forwards when Clubb has his foot held still pointing backwards. Clubb is holding it still in a natural position. If Percival stays on his feet, or falls backwards (as would be natural) we get no issue there. I'm glad Percival didn't get injured as I was expecting it when it happened.

Tony Clubb 2 carries for 11 metres.
Ollie Partington 5 carries for 20 metres.

For starting props those are absolutely disgusting stats.

Fair enough, it all depends how the disciplinary panel see it though. Percival didn't seem too impressed with him