didn't think the tackle was too bad but Sinfield didn't have one of his better nights fortunately for us - he made some shocking decisions which seemed to set the trend for the whole team !
Burrow and Hardaker were anonymous thanks to the quick closing down but I thought JJB & Watkins looked good

thought Puletua & Soliola were immense and Hohaia came into the game a bit more though I would like to see Gaskell back at SO

the only negative for me was Flannery who can't justify his place IMO

Ive seen those tackles brought up before the RFL as careless,not this time though.

I am being objective.


Nothing wrong with his effort. Hall is a big bloke and Makinson simply made a naive error of going high instead of low. Had he gone low, Hall was his. Makinson is yet to play a full season in the first team. He will make these naive errors. One error in a whole match is nothing.


Did you see his arm? It was trapped under Hardaker. Leeds were trying to get penalties all night. It was the only way they could make yards. And he wasn't the only Saints player to give away a penalty (whether deserved or not) so that has absolutely no bearing on whether he had a good game in my view. Giving away a single penalty is hardly having a bad game or even a mixed game.

As was posted elsewhere, he scored a cracker of a try, took some amazing catches, looked for work, defended well (other than the Hall error) and made some good kick returns. He is a very promising player, period.

I think JJB,JP and Kylie ran well.
Not sure what went wrong apart from some silly offloads mainly by Ablett and pish poor defence by many of our forwards.
See you in the GF

with maybe a semi final in Perpignan ?



looking forward to the 'big three' coming down this season with Saints playing in france in the summer for once and not in blinkin' february/march when it's brass monkeys ! brrhhh

(and it's finally stopped raining in saint junien !)

Nothing naive about it really. It was simply a poor tackle and he should have done better. Mistakes happen.

It was a poor technique by Sinfield and was malicious but he should still get a ban as his mistake injured another teams player. He's up before committe and thin he will get a match ban. He looked bemused last night but I am sure when he see's the replay it wasnt just nothing.

it was lazy, nothing else

It wasn`t poor technique at all.
Ablett tackles Makinson and as he goes down Sinfield comes in and clocks him one. Unintentional and no malice.
Sinfield is not a dirty player end of.
By the way the panel reckon Sinfield has no case to answer.

What about the miss by Lomax just prior?

Sorry was supposed to have typed wasn't malicious.

Sinfield's tackle was tired and clumsy and nothing more - it would be very, very harsh to give him a ban for it. Which, under the current RL Randomised Punishment System means he'll probably get a 4 match ban for it...

...and I'd have loved to have been reading the "Meli is the evil son of Satan and must be stoned to death on the Town Hall steps" thread that would have been here if he'd messed up that tackle instead of the current Teflon one. Makinson does a lot of good stuff but still a lot of bad stuff - he's a young 'un still so that's only natural and understandable and I wouldn't criticise him for any of it, but the one-eyed leeway he gets compared to most of the rest of the squad is a little amusing, even taking age/experience into account.

Ryan Hall has not looked out of place playing against the Aussies, missing a tackle on him is hardly the sign of inadequacy.

I watched on the tv, so may be wrong, but from what I could tell the cover was nowhere near back and had he not delayed the tackle they'd have scored anyway.

That would of course rely on someone actually watching the game, and not simply trot out someone else's opinion about the GF 3 years ago. If Meli, Shenton, Wellens and Flannery leave at the end of the season, and god forbid Hohaia and Perry go too, the doom n gloom brigade will go into meltdown. Who will they turn their attention to then?

Thing is, though, Makinson doesn't do a LOT of 'bad' stuff. He occasionally makes a mistake. But he does a lot of GOOD stuff and when he does his GOOD stuff, it is generally outstanding. And he is our youngest and least experienced player. Therefore, he is the opposite in all respects to Meli.

No case to answer for Sinfield. I must say, there appeared to be only minimal contact, so reckon Makinson should be put in the same glass chin category as Fairy Fielden. However, I'm also sure that he won't let this end his career, unlike good old Stu.

I thought Makinson was outstanding again last night and more than held his own against arguably one of the top 3 wingers in the world. This kid has so much potential, yes he will make the odd mistake but nobody is perfect and the good things he does far outweigh the odd negative. Heard this morning his injury isn't as bad as first feared so hopefully he is back soon.

I think Foster and Gardner (even if he was on crutches) would need to be reintroduced to the team immediately or Wilkin's head would explode with the concentrated unjustified kneejerk numpty hatred being focused entirely on him and him alone, a bit like in "Scanners"



Either that or they'll all have to turn in on themselves and start tearing into each other for each and every defeat or tiny mistake. Lucky the seats are red as the stands would be running with blood....

I thought that he had a wow of a game,ok he was steam rollered by Hall but that is no great shame as he has done the same and to more experienced test players

Tommy again looked outstanding and is definately our heir apparent to the FB spot once Wellens retires or moves to loose forward

Totally agree. It seems the coaching staff were impressed with his performance on Monday night too and he will be a big miss against Wigan on Sunday given that he was one of our best players against them last time out.

Will we ever see him play fullback for an extended period though? He should have been there developing over the last 2 years and could be an international quality fullback by now. But instead we're okay because we've got Wello, and he doesn't drop the ball many times.

Whilst he's been decent at wing, I don't see how this proves him to be the FB next year or the year after.

to be fair, the basics of full back are simple

Can he catch a high ball - tick
Has he good positional play - tick
Can he tackle effectively - tick

plus he's got bags of pace and can beat a man. He's a big attacking threat, Im not saying he is definitely our next FB, but he's got the skills to do it IMO