I'm certainly not just yet!

We played well against a Saints outfit that looked disinterested and thought they had it in the bag. Put it this way, Saints have only shipped in 38 points once in the last 2 years. Is Widnes's attack really that good to inflict that level of damage or were Saints not playing at as intense a level as they usually would?

Friday will again tell us a lot and I won't even start getting excited until then. If Saints up their game and give us a predictable battering then it was as I suspect. If we can match them again for periods of the game and keep them to less than 20 points then we might have turned the corner.

Betts' problem is that he over respects SL oppostion as if Widnes should feel priveliged to share the same pitch.He puts the whole competition on a pedastal and compares ourselves as boys playing against men,all the time lowering expectations and convincing fans we are lucky to be where we are because last year we were playing Batley,which in turn buys himself more time because at the end of the day Widnes are shat and we know we are and don't have a hope in hell of competing yet.Stuff that,it's just a game of RL.Fair enough,a team such as ours will cop a few hidings during the season but FFS not conceding nearly 40 per game every game.Could and should be doing better.

I don't want to be too down on the performance but we're kidding ourselves if we don't think Saints took their foot off the gas. They've only conceded 38 points one other time in the last 2 years and I suspect they didn't on Saturday because of Widnes's irresistible attack.

They'll no doubt tighten things up and aren't likely to take their feet off the gas again. If we could keep them to maybe 25-30 points then this would probably represent improvement.

I just hope we don't get a thrashing again because if we do, it almost certainly means that nothing had really changed on Saturday except for Saints not treating us with respect like Wigan didn't.

I agree with this. This is one of my big problems with how it has gone this year. They have made out like Super League is this standard of competition that we could never have hoped to compete with in just one year.

If they were talking about the NRL then I'd agree but we're not. Featherstone were a good example of a team that just went for it rather than being in awe of their opposition who were clearly better conditioned than they were. They outdid them in enthusiasm and effort, something many of us expected this year. Personally, I expected a low quality but high effort side this year.

I actually feel a bit sorry for Betts and think that the blame should lie as much with SOC as him. As pointed out earlier in the thread, we have had our problems with injuries. However, Betts was such an unpopular choice that many fans aren't willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this when a more experienced coach might get this. It is hard to accept from an inexperienced coach that the players he recruited were the best we could have done or that our problems are purely down to injuries.

A coach with a proven record gets the benefit of the doubt. However with Betts he has no record to show that these are not just excuses for his poor performance. I personally think regardless of injuries, there is enough evidence that Betts is one of the big problems.

Spot on weren't you Pepe. All optimism for this season has pretty much vanished.