=#FF0000PEANLTIES FOR ST HELENS SHOULD BE IN RED

Every week I pay close attention to Jon Wilkins stats as he's a play I just can't make my mind up on.

He work rate in defence is as good as you can get from a backrow but its his attack, it's basically shocking! His meter making is near the lowest every week. I know he does his fair share of ball play.

If only he could just bring that extra attack to his play.

The stats say it all really - we absolutely creamed them in the forwards but they had some creativity and a bit of a clue (and a kicker) and so got all the scores. How could any team have that amount of upfront superiority and yet not be able to convert any more of it than that into points?

Judging Wilkin on this season's performances is harsh in the extreme given that he's had to be both our main tackling machine and our primary playmaker all season - expecting him to be able to eat up the yards as well is just unreasonable in the extreme.

I've just took a look at a sample of 6 games from last season to see what the impact this had upon his stats. In all honesty, it's not a lot. He often had a low metre count with a very low average per carry.

Fair enough. At the end of the day he's not a TP/Sia/Westwood who'll eat tacklers and chew up yards and judging him on that criteria still isn't entirely fair. He's a tackling machine who gives us clever running (when we have the halves to make use of it), good options in our kicking game and backup for the halves. With a team full of just Sias, Manus and TPs instead of the Wilkins, Flannerys and Flanagans, as exciting as it may be to watch, we'd struggle to win many of the big 'uns. For me he's still invaluable to the overall makeup of the side.

What the stats don't account for are the half breaks he makes around the ruck area which sets up a quick PTB for Roby to exploit.

Some of Wilkin's defensive stats are excellent, only 1 miss from 43 tackles is a great effort and he's putting in a shedload of work.

The only thing thing about that is whether a tackle machine should warrant top international wages, which I assume he will be on. I suppose that comes down to how well money is distributed throughout the team. He certainly shouldn't be playing a Sinfield type playmaker role or doing most of the kicking, that's for sure.

Even though your top metre makers were Makinson, Meli and Wellens.

How do the stats say it all 'really'?

Look at Paul Clough, with and average carry of 8.27
Why isn't he on the pitch longer, do you think? Is it that he's not physical enough in defence? He doesn't miss many, but he doesn't really dominate to oppo either?

When pondering Wilkin, I'm afraid that his role in the side as kicker and back up organiser has completely marginalised any go forward he may bring.
If we had one or two halves that could kick, he could go back to being a forward. He may not be the biggest, but he can complement the tougher guys with some clever line running. We haven't really seen that for a few seasons, though.

Did anyone think Flash had a good game? He certainly did a lot of good work in the first half.

We do, he's been playing in the reserves most of the year.

I thought Flanagan had by far his best game in attack for us. Showed a bit of promise which I hadn't seen much of, hope he kicks on now.

Exactly this.

We need a half back and some potency and pace in the backs, but we knew that anyone. I feel sorry for our pack, it's dominated a really strong pack and got no reward for it.

Wilkin will nearly always have a low metre count, he,s not a hard running momentum player. His game is short passing and changing direction of attack something our half backs should be doing more of. He is very similar to Sinfield and O'Loughlin leaving the hard yards to the bigger guys.
You need a couple of playmakers in the pack if your half backs are not giving the team attacking options, I,m just glad Manu is on board next season for obvious reasons.

Whist we are on the topic of stats, these should create some debate on our season stats.

We have made more metres than any club in Superleague 39690

We have the most tackles than any club in Superleague 8280

We have the most carries than any other club in Superleague 6095

We have the least amount of errors than any other club in Superleague 278

We are runner up to the club who has the least amount of missed tackles in Super league 458

We have made the most dummy runs than any other club in Superleague By a big Margin


The negative side is we are just MR Joe Average for Try Assists and Offloads.............................Creativity anyone.

I reckon all that is because we have James Roby in our team!




No surprise there.

Do you really believe this? I've watched the game back and if you believe this your seriously deluded.

The Warrington forwards made nigh on the same metres as Saints in considerably fewer carries whilst being much more dominant in the tackle and controlling the play the ball. We won't even consider how many tries each set of forwards scored.

As an aside but linked to Saints forwards; what was the point of Dixon being on the bench?

You are just doing what all winning sides do, watch it back and see dominance that just isn't there. The one and only stat/graphic Phil Clarke has ever come up with that is any use is the one which shows the volume of play the balls in each area of the pitch. Saints completely and utterly dominated and controlled the first 50 minutes of the game. We had far, far more play the balls in your 20 than you had in ours. If anything in that first 50 minutes you only had decent field position about 3 times, that's not a sign of your pack being dominant. Us having so much possession is a sign our pack was playing well enough for us to keep the ball. We had set after set in your twenty and didn't even look like scoring. Our pack is easily as good as Warrington's, but there are a few things that make you the better side. Hodgson adds a dimension to your attack that we just don't have, we've fallen for his looping runs in every game against you this season. Briers is another big factor, controlling the game and marshalling you around and teeing up the set plays in our 20 that make you so such a threat.

If Saints had a proper fullback and scrum half, we'd be well in the hunt for trophies.

And therein lies the problem. Negative boring rugby. How can the half backs play when they don't get the same amount of ball as other teams?

...or to precis: we have the best pack in the league, but a hopelessly ineffective backline. If only we had had a coach who could have massaged any productivity at all from outside of the second row...

I think you must have been watching the league game from a few weeks ago by mistake sonny. Try again watching [iSaturday[/i's game instead and then tell me your forwards weren't utterly dominated for the first 50 minutes or so. Or failing that, perhaps you might want to think about =#FF0000why your forwards had so many fewer carries, and =#FF0000why they had to make so many more tackles than our forwards did, hmmm? Even the balancing of the yardage that happened when you were running riot in the last 20 minutes after our heads had dropped still hardly gets close to levelling the discrepancy up - if stats were compiled just for the opening 50 minutes then I bet a few semi-final records for one-sidedness may have been broken... Just consider the tackle counts alone for the love of mercy - you had to make over 30% more of them than we did... I bet there have been 50 point routs this season with more balanced forward stats than Saturday's game...



This.

Apart from the usual Wello baiting anyway

Oh look Mr Condascending has called me "sonny".

Why so few carries - couple of reasons; Warrington's tactic to kick early in the tackle count reduces the number of carries, penalty count of 5 to 1 during the initial period and a couple of drop outs, plus when Warrington got the ball in Saints twenty it was quite easy to score without having to build any pressure (even if your forwards were totally dominating ours). Yet for all that pressure your totally dominant forwards could only muster a two point lead.

If a team can win comfortably whilst having to make 30% more tackles that alone indicates which pack was dominating the other and had them under control. Do all that tackloing but still manage to waltz in for three tries. How many tries did your dominant pack score?

Are you seriously claiming that the likes of Perry, Wilkin and Flannagan got on top of their opposition? If you take Roby's scooting out of your pack's metres it is even more average.

As previously asked; why if your pack was so domainat were your three highest metre makes your full-back and two wingers?

Have you actually watched the match again away from the emotion of watching live?

Whilst you can deny it, there's a lot that rings true.
We gained 25% more yards than you through the match, despite you blitzing us for a large portion of the 2nd half.
The positives that we cling to but which you dispute are true, but they also go to demonstrate our major flaw, which is a lack of creative play. Our forwards had no problem gaining ground and holding possession, whilst at the same time restricting your yards in the first half whilst we were fresh. However, our attack is 1 dimensional and easy to read. Whilst the forwards can get up field and drive your guys back, the lack of any width means that, apart from the actual wrestle in contact, its not causing the defence to work hard. On the flip side, Wire (and pretty much every other team) shift the ball significantly more from side to side, moving the defence with them, probing and causing more sliding and even scrambling defence. This meant that as the game went on, Warrington's energy levels didn't decline as fast as ours.
Also add to the that the mental side of things, the Saints forwards winning the territory and possesion battle, but converting generally few chances. The Wire forwards know that every other time they get down our end they'll score, since our defence out wide is poor against a good running line and your have a strong tactic with the Briers kick to Monoghan. That sort of thing allowed Wire to grow in confidence as the game went on.

Everytime we lose by more than a few points, there's some poster on here telling us how terrible we are and how we are inferior in every single area to them. It wasn't long ago we had a certain Wigan poster on here telling us how not a single saints forward would be worth a place in his teams pack.
Wire are coached by probably the most highly rated coach in the country, we're coached by the guy who started the year as the youth team director. Its no wonder that as the game went on we lost our lead and you ran a way with it as its two good sets of players with two sets of wildly varying tactics (ours essentially being - don't drop the ball).

If all this was true how do you explain the stat that says Saints off-loaded twice as much as Warrington.

Still makes me laugh even now does that



All absolutely true anyway. I think the 2 playoff games have pretty much proved our strengths and weaknesses conclusively - we outplayed the 2nd best pack in the league twice in quick succession and I don't know how much more proof of the basic quality of our 8-13 anyone would need than that. Similarly the fact that we couldn't score from 10 yards out for most of the first half proves how awful our backs have been this year...

Oh, and let's not forget that our forwards' yardage stats were diminished by the fact that many of their runs in the first half started from inside the opposition's 10 yard line, and it's difficult to rack up extreme yardage if you're running from 10 yards out and can't score all the time...