It was far from the issue tonight though, infact Green was probably our best player although Smith really struggled.

All about attitude tonight.

You'd have got nothing had the vid ref correctly disallowed your first try. Regardless of that please accept that it was the fact we kept you quiet and not that you played rubbish.

Got out of jail big time penalties are killing us, most of them deserved by the way but the season starts after Widnes away

Occasionally good teams play poorly. Also occasionally, poor teams play well (especially when they are facing the reality of their season ending with naught). Occasionally (again) these will coincide. The end of the world is not nigh.

Chester's tactics were to cut off our playmakers from the outside runners. This worked until the very end. Farrell was hardly seen all night. Gelling and Sarginson were overcrowded and stopped, they could hardly get a pass away. We were slow out of dh which addedto our problems. HKR loked like they wanted far more than us.
Another case of scoring "too early" with hardly working for it and then thinking the game was won, after 2 mins. We relaxed, made numerous errors and allowed HKR into the game.
Once HKR got going they were easily the better team. Then we couldn't pick it up again until Williams gave us that pace up the middle.
With all the teams around us having gimme games we could be 4th perhaps by Sunday night.

Stats beg to differ

top 6 table:

[code
Saints 6 0 2 45 12
Huddersfield 4 1 3 -24 9
Wigan 4 0 5 21 8
Leeds 3 2 4 2 8
Castleford 3 1 5 -20 7
Warrington 3 0 4 -24 6
[/code

it was a good showing from your fans, stayed right till the end and got your reward.

The context of the games we have won have been important though. We win when we're told we've got no chance yet in games like ours at the DW, the Cas cup game and our two Huddersfield games we've been well beaten after going in to them on a weeks worth of back slapping about how good we are.

The greater the challenge, the more they're written off the better this team seems to play. The most dangerous thing that could happen for other teams leading up to the play offs is that we limp along and start to get written off. If we go in flying that over confidence will probably cost us.

played 2 big games all year and lost them both, I agree with what hes saying last year we were awesome at the start of the year and knew we had lots of improvement. This year I dont see it,

What's that?

I only half agree with you. Wigan's first try was ok. There was no deliberate second movement and momentum carried him over. It was well explained by the expert referee and so you should not have any complaints about that decision.

However I do agree with you that HKR played well in defence and didn't let Wigan get on a roll. The rush defence and closing down our three quarters was good tactics and worked. This was the cause of Wigan's errors. It was disappointing that Wigan did not see what was happening a bit earlier and changed things in attack. They need to learn from this for the play-offs.

nohalfbcks (how very apt your user name is in this post).

We are still searching for a plan B, it as crying out for an half back to put through a little grubber or a little chip over the top to keep the KR defenders from rushing the Wigan outside backs.

League form pretty much means nothing at this time of the year. It doesn't mean much at any time of the year but enough results needs to come to get into a decent playoff position and title challengers will nearly always flex their muscle and go on a run at some point just to show their rivals they're around and mean business. Teams are scheming and plotting for old trafford now.

If you'd taken last years run in, in isolation, it looked like wigan were completly blowing the season.

I think wigan will definitly be at old trafford, but i'm not sure who they will be playing or wther they'll win.

I genuinely can't say who will be at Old Trafford and in all honesty it could be any of the top 6

Strange old year

The table as it would stand if you only considered matches between Saints, Wigan, Huddersfield, Leeds, Warrington and Castleford (the top 6)?

Its a Pie chart

Have hull fc played wigan or rovers yet this season ?

Yeah its been a poor season really with no stand out teams. All of the top clubs of the last few years have been very up and down and none have looked particularly great.

Conversely you could say that more clubs are stepping up & becoming more professional in their attitude. And that the days of runaway performances are in abatement - with P&R back I think we'll go back to the bad old days of routine telephone number scores and the moan will then be about the "usual suspects" at the top of the ladder: but that remains to be seen.

Whilst it might be nice to win games by simply turning up, it don't half make for a boring day/night out. I'd much rather have a season where the French nil the cabbage munchers out of the blue one minute then loose to Dr K's mercenaries the next.

Having said that, it [ihas [/ibeen an odd season & there have been some strange games. And as another thread has pointed out, I'm damned if MoS can even be identified yet.

Really? Would it be better if all the top teams were guaranteed a win whenever they took the field?

Or you could say the top clubs have all got weaker and the weaker clubs have all stayed the same and not really improved at all. A race to the bottom to make things more equal isnt a good thing either neither is top clubs not taking games seriously because the result doesnt matter and losing as a consequence. I would love a NRL style competition where anyone could beat anyone but we are far from that. Next season should be a lot better mind you with 2 less team, all teams spending up to the cap and the need to avoid relegation meaning every game counts for something.

Seriously?! So Castleford, for example, haven't improved, it's just that everybody else has weakened and come down to their level?

We now have a top 6 where anyobdy could beat anybody, and the top 10 games are far from foregone conclusions, and yet this is apparently evidence that the top teams are weakening, all the while saying you would like an NRL style competition were anybody could beat anybody.



The pessimism of RL in full swing!

Of course Cas have improved but I think his "race to the bottom" comment is worth consideration. The results may be less predictable but the quality is on the wane IMO. I watch all of the SL and NRL I can and it's like watching 2 different sports at times.

in what way?

In terms of intensity, fitness, quality NRL has probably never been farther in front of SL IMO. No doubt someone will come on soon and say there are quite a few SL clubs that could mix it in the NRL, but how do you think our team of kids would do down there? They would get slaughtered, yet are in with a real chance of carrying the comp over here.
I think another indication of domestic decline comes to mind very readily when you look back at some of the best players in recent history and compare them to today's equivalents. It's all opinions ateotd but the likes of Offiah, Davies, Sculthorpe, Faz, Long, Lyon, Robinson, etc, etc were miles better than their contemporaries - IMO, of course.

Edit: contemporaries? You know what I mean!