...18-10 up at cas and let them catch up..18-6 against widnes let them catch up..and then let the giants score 2 trys to take us level...alright we won 2 of those games..but it seems we cant pull away when we take a good lead...barging up the middle all the time..hardly any breaks made..and the defence in front of our own posts is dire!...if you welded flanagan and richards together, you still wouldnt make a rugby player..annoyed even though we won!

Admittedly there were some alarming problems. But there were quite a few positives as well.

1. Quinlan.
2. Percival
3. Our ability to think clearly under pressure down the stretch.
4. Walsh's second half attacking performance.
5. Mose came good, again.

Oh and I forgot to mention Travis Burns. Fought like Roberto Duran tonight.

Mose was good tonight. I thought he was one of the few who did ok last week as well. He's very very good when he's up for it.

Really dont understand the stick Richards recieves on here. The lad is 19 years old playing in the toughest position on the field. I thought he took the ball in well tonight and no handling errors.

On wards and up wards i hope but i'm not confident at all for the rest of the year. We seem to have fallen off the horse big time. Makinson in for Dawson, Wilkin in for Richards, Vea in for Flanagan and we should improve imo.

The only issue I have with Richards is his propensity for giving away penalties. I agree with you. He's being judged as though he is a fully mature 23-year old forward when really he's just a kid.



Vea is the big one. He has enough energy for two forwards. And we really do need an injection of stamina right now.

I've said for a while that Richsrds needs taken out for a while. Not because I don't tbink he's a good kid but I think he's struggled a little this year. Brown took Percy out when he was struggling and it's not dropping them as they young kids but I feel Richsrds needs a break.

The lads only 19 and has many years to go yet. Id give Thompson some game time now.

As KC would probably say an Ugly win, we could have been 18-0 down in the first 20 minutes only for our scrambling defence. Quinlan looked good taking the high ball, his defence one on one near the line will be a problem though. I will be happy with one more win before going into the 8's, when we go into this phase we need to pick up form similar to what we did last season, still lots of rugby to play yet.

I certainly prefer Thompson over Flash.

Out of interest, how tall is Flanagan? I can't imagine he's that big. If he is he's punching significantly under his weight.

Agree with St.Pete that Richards needs taking out of the firing line. This is why for next year I feel we need another prop to come in if Haggerty isn't going to be involved that much. Making Richards 5th choice would allow rotation of our forwards like we used to have when Graham was coming through. It'd keep them sharp and he wouldn't get fatigued. His performance is suffering at the minute though and he does have the tendency to give away penalties a fair bit which he needs to sort out.

He's had some problems earlier this season. But you could hardly fault him tonight.

Imo we 100% need a prop for next year. We struggling with go forward at the moment with only big Alex and Mose ready making the meters.

We will miss the Mose thst was on show last night next year. When he can be bothered he's very good but i worry about Amor, he's getting hammered and looks very lightweight. Richsrds is still few seasons off being what he's going to be so Imo we need a prop.

Thought Richards went OK last night looked a lot better than the previous 3 games, made plenty of tackles took the ball up with a bit more pace, don,t recall him making any errors or giving penalties away.
Maybe we need to look at rotating a few forwards when Vea comes back, Thompson needs a bit more game time, we need a bit more agression in the pack when defending.
We have gone back to being a bit soft, slow line speed letting the oppostion run into us with a bit of pace and yet again relying on a scrambling defence which is a risk with the better teams.

I'll tell you what was woeful: our frigging defence. Absolute sieve all night

Another ugly win, but it is two points, that's what counts, I turned off in the end! Mose, not sure how he gets away with the clumsy? knee in heads of players on the ground, three if first half?

Apologies, I didn't mean tonight but he had last week off vs Leeds and it made a difference tonight, he looked energised and like he could keep up with play. I'm not knocking his defence as that's usually very good, he just seems to give daft penalties away sometimes coupled with a error. Still doesn't negate the fact that I'd want another prop in to rotate with.

In a weird kind of way the fact that he gives away quite a few penalties is a positive sign. He's not a dirty player. It's important to make that distinction first and foremost because players who act like thugs help no one.

The majority of Richards' penalties are either professional fouls or brought about through over-exuberance. That shows two things - he's aware of what's taking place around him (rather than concentrating solely on his game) and he's competitive. Both attributes are desirable from a coaching perspective.

Richards' problem is he has yet to gain sufficient experience in knowing when and where he can get away with bending the rules. I'd wager Travis Burns conceded a similarly high number of penalties during his early career.

Once Greg gains a bit more experience I think he will become a key member of our pack. Without players who are willing to stretch the rules it's very difficult to compete at championship level.

i thought you were lucky last night, some poor defending from both sides for tries

some awful decision making by us in the first 10 minutes that could have seen us 3 scored up and cruising, then you went down to our end and came up with a flukey try, and repeated it 20 minutes later, not to mention walsh's kick and the decisions at the end which could have gone either way.

i think a draw would have been a fair result as i thought both teams were poor at times, but i'd definately be thinking we got lucky if i was a saint today.

Saints were mediocre. But blaming "luck" when you had every opportunity to win and yet couldn't do so seems a bit like self-delusion.

luck in the sense that certainly 2,possibly 3 of your tries were very fortunate tries rather than well worked defence splitting tries

certainly, we only have ourselves to blame for not putting the game possibly out of your reach after 10 minutes!

A professional team knows before it enters the field that luck could work against them. It's infuriating, sure. But if you can't overcome luck as a factor then you really have no excuses.

i'm not offering excuses, i accept that we blew our chances to win the game and that you took yours, added to with that luck that every team needs

We've had tons of rotten luck all season so I'm not going to pass up the odd gift. I've never seen a season in which we've conceded so many bizarre long-distance tries after the ball has bounced cleanly into the opposition winger's hands with no one in front of him.

Luck is mythical...a coin doesn't flip itself. Ok, there's no skill required in flipping a coin but a try depends on how well the attacking team executes a play and how well the defending team stops it happening.

If Roby does a grubber kick for example that bounces off a defenders legs directly into the hands of Quinlan, then that's not luck, that's quality of execution by the attacking team.

Blaming things that happen on the pitch on luck is lazy.

exactly, i'm not begrudging the fact that you were fortunate in scoring at least 14 points that were just pure strokes of luck, we all have a bit of luck at some point during the season, but not usually that much