Meli is only an attacking threat from within the 10 metre line, with the odd exception, and any attack he may be involved with he negates by his defensive errors and general laziness. He didn't look for work on Saturday, unlike his counterpart on our right flank, and his effort at defence was pitiful, comprising running alongside the Wigan winger until someone else tackled him. That took place right in front of me.

Only a few are deluded about Meli. I would bet that most Saints fans wanted him gone after the second Grand Final he messed up. But after the last one, when we had to rely on him out of sheer desperation due to reduced numbers, he should never have played another game in the red vee. He is a waste of a shirt and one of our young upcoming guys should be taking his spot.

You do know that there are 16 other players that contribute to a poor team performance, and it isn't all Wellens' fault? For what it's worth I agree that he's part of the problem that we lack leadership, but ultimately no one else is stepping up either, so how can you hold him fully accountable? Who would you make captain, out of interest?



Except we do, we beat Wigan in two high-pressure playoff games last year to make the Grand Final and Wellens was instrumental in both. Or are you just griping that we haven't won the Grand Final since 2006 and the collective burden on the 30 or 40 players who've represented us in this combined games somehow should come down on Wellens' back?

All I said was that he was one of our better players at the weekend (not difficult) and I still have faith in him to be in the squad next year.

The problem you have stretches back a few years.

Your team are getting old and you've done nothing about it, apart from signing old Aussies.

Last season you looked great. Lomax and Gaskell were on fire, so what do you do? Drop Gaskell (the better of the two players!), bring Lance Hohaia into your side and play him out of position. Stupid.

Wellens is too old and slow for playing full back now. He'd be better off in the centres to tighten up the defence. Yes, I know Brett Finch walked past him on Saturday, but that was more to do with his lack of pace than technique. In a proper defensive line, I'm sure he would be as solid as anyone.

There are many other things wrong, but a good start would be to put Hohaia at full back, where he belongs (or even better, on a plane back to New Zealand), put Wellens in the centres and bring Lee Gaskell back.

Now, whilst I love it when Wigan give Saints a damn good tonking or ten, I still want to see a competitive Saints side in Super League, so you can take me seriously when I say I do hope you sort yourselves out.

I would agree with that. Wellens didn't have a great game, but you cannot knock his effort. Same with Makinson.

Again, I'm completely baffled by the TV pundits' bagging of our pack. I thought it performed pretty well. Indeed, in the first twenty minutes (when Roby was getting enough go-forward to spring him from the dummy half) I thought it was outstanding. Sure, Perry looks like he could do with losing an extra six pounds or so - but even so, he wasn't THAT bad. The problem for me - which has been the problem all season - is no matter how hard the pack works there is NOTHING outside to capitalize on its efforts. It must be infuriating being a Saints forward right now - here they are doing all the hard graft, providing the platform for our backs to provide the cutting edge and whenever the ball moves twelve feet either side of the posts it stops dead (or worse).

Even if we had any decent backs there is no play-making scrum half to give them the ball! Worse still, we can't keep opponents off us because we don't have any kicking game to speak of. If ever there was a recipe for catastrophe this is it.

In retrospect it was a mistake to jettison some of the youngsters in favour of bringing back Wheeler and Wilkin. Neither was anywhere near effective with the former being something of a liability. I guess it's the kind of error you expect from a new coach - trusting to experience over youth in big matches. But both Rush & Keiron are going to have to learn quickly if we are to salvage anything from this season.

Priority #1 - Bring back Gaskell. He might be undercooked in terms of physique - but he's the only halfback we have with a kicking game who can also organise the attack. Gaskell is our future and the sooner we begin to mould the team around his talents the sooner we're likely to dig ourselves out of this mess.

Swift, Jones & Makinson must also be fast-tracked into regular first team action. Makinson is ready now whilst Jones' freakish physique should allow him to stand up to SL punishment. Swift is the biggest risk because his body isn't quite there yet - but if it's a choice between the standard sub-standard tripe served up by Meli & Gardner and taking a chance on a rookie I'll take the latter every time.

But by far the toughest decision is Wellens. Both Rush & Cunningham have a long history with Wello. I imagine they are good friends. Which will make the job of moving him out of full-back all that harder. I suspect they won't have the stones to make that call. But they have to.

I don't agree with that: we took a chance on LMS, Shenton and Flanagan who are potential (or at the time was) young England internationals.

Coupled with that we have also brought through the likes of Makinson, Lomax, Wheeler, Gaskell, Jones, Swift and (arguably) Foster who could all be potential international players

Admittedly we have signed the likes of Perry and Hohaia, but they aren't 'old' players 28/29 when they signed? That's good logic from Saints to bring in these sorts of experienced players to go alongside the younger players named above.

The problem lies in the recruitment, scouting and planning of singing our imports which has quite frankly been abysmal; your point that we have done nothing at all but sign old Aussies is a very weak argument.

I couldn't agree more; I'm sure that I read that we had 90% territory in those first 10mins and then throughout the game the pack got us in some great positions, but as you say:



Spot on.

Hardly a tonking???? we was'nt that bad, 75-0 is a tonking?

Yes Wigun have the beating of us at the minute but we are not that far behind you? Sort our attack out and we'll be a differant side

Not sure I follow the logic. You want to get rid of Meli because he may make an error, and replace him with Foster who has made some serious howlers this year that have cost us games. Foster who offers less than Meli in attack??? How does this work out?

There is a difference, though, between an experienced, so-called international who has played the game for years and who consistently and predictably makes the same errors year in, year out, and a young guy who last season often won us games with his kicking and finishing being a bit off form at the start of the season. Or don't you agree?

Last season we weren't far away from Wigan. This season we are miles away.

Foster is cheaper, English and kicks goals. He scored 20 tries last year, compared to Meli's 12.

I agree entirely. Mugwump is bang on the mark on this thread.

Our pack, whilst not a classic lineup by any means and lacking in aggression, is capable of laying a sufficient platform. As you mention we had masses of possession against Wigan in both the derbies we've lost this season. We've also spent significant time in their 10 to be in a position to post sufficient points to win the games. In the LP derby we had enough position to win several games, but we couldn't do it. I find it really funny that we are all bagging Perry and the forwards, when we are also starting threads about how clueless we are in the opposition 10. We wouldn't be in those positions without a decent pack.

I'm in full agreement that the backs need to be changed. A new fullback would give us that element of unpredictability that causes defenses to line up wrong. Look at Sam Tomkins' try for Wigan, blissfully simple and scored because Tomkins joins the line, causing Lomax to shoot out to 'his' man and open up a hole big enough for a bus. Had that been us, the pass would go to Wellens who would have been struggling to keep up and would have thrown a pass to a flat footed centre or fallen at the feet of their defenders. I cannot state how enormously important having a proper fullback is these days.

Beyond that I'm not conviced whether the issue is the players or the coaching. Since Anderson left we don't seem to have any idea what to do in the opposition 10. We score against the minor sides as they make the mistakes without any clever work from us, or from barging over. Against the big sides, we are clueless. They don't even seem to attempt moves or have any structure to the play, it seems to be 5 off the cuff movements of the ball, more often than not to a flat footed player. We waste so many tackles in the opposition 10 and need to be far more ruthless. The one move the players seem to have, the one that Shenton scored from in the Grand Final is a good example. It's a set move that is very effective, but we even seem to have forgotten that, probably because it doesn't work anymore as teams can read it so easily now.

Hohaia pretending to be a halfback whilst having little experience of playing there, combined with a junior half in Lomax and nothing at all from fullback means our three creative players are next to useless when we're camped on the opposition line.

However, we were ably assisted by Wigan, especially in the first half. Wigan performed 19 handling errors (to our 11) and conceded six penalties (to our 10). Those errors, which were more numerous in the first half, definitely assisted in getting us up the field. Our pack was not that outstanding. And they seemed to give up entirely during the final 20 minutes of the game.

Our field position was 74% in the first half; 53% in the second according to reports.

I'm not. Josh Perry is simply the worst forward you have signed since Paul Round. Actually he's not. Laffranchi is.

The pair of them are awful. Just awful. Laffranchi is anonymous, and Perry is a big baby and got literally owned, twice, by Gaz Hock. I noticed on Saturday, Hock moved up into our front row when Perry was on, just so he could wind him up. It worked.

The only good prop you've got fit at the moment is McCarthy-Scarsbrook, and even he has underperformed of late. That said, it's not surprising he looks bad, because he can't carry it all on his own, can he?

And yet, statistically, Laffranchi is our best prop. LMS tends to be less effective against an opposition who give him a hard time and defensively he can be less keen shall we say than Laffranchi.

What a ridiculous comment.

Laffranchi has been one our most consistent performers this season.

Robinson is one of the more cringeworthy Wigan trolls on here. But it just demonstrates the papering over effect that a win in a game actually has. If your side wins, every one of your players becomes a superstar and has outplayed their opposite number, whether than was the case or not.

Laffranchi isn't great. He isn't a prop at all. But he's still better than Perry and Clough by a distance and contributes far more than LMS.

Tbf it looks like everyone else is just as far behind Wigan as you lot.

Effort, enthusiasm and courage are no longer enough. We need pace at that position. Why are people still struggling to see this especially when they're the same people that normally complain about the lack of pace on the wing? We need to bite the bullet on this and it has been something that's been a serious concern since at least the second Grand Final loss to Leeds. He has been a great player but this isn't football and physical discrepancies can be cruelly exposed in the most subtle ways at this level i.e. kick returns, linking up, breaks that can't go further than a few metres.

If anyone wants a reminder of what having pace at full back can do, go and look at Amos Roberts' tries during that glorious run he had just before his injury. It was incredible stuff.

75-0 against a reserve side led by Ian Millward looks amazing on paper, and I'm not surprised you're still after all this time dining out on it.

I'd suggest that the several beatings we've put on your first choice sides lately are a bit more substantial than that one freak result, wouldn't you? You might open your other eye to see it, though, that's the only problem.

Look, love, put your fishing rod away. I didn't say that and you know it.

You will also see that I have been supportive of your predicament in other posts.

75-0 will always be wonderful. It was wonderful in 2006 when we won everything on offer. It is wonderful today when we have won nothing for years. It will always be wonderful and it is good of you to remind us of it.



(At least we have two eyes to open ...)

Fair enough. I presume you mean consistently distinctly average, in which case you have a point.

Ive bagged Perry for a lot this season and i refuse to believe anyone actually thinks this guy is any good. Lacklustre in attack a lot of the time and often standard in defence. Wigan are a freakish team, they have players that can slot so easily into the prop position from second row. Hock does it with ease and id imagine that Hansen could do it. We have one player who can play both positions, TP. Clough occasionally does it but i see him more as a ball carrying 11 getting the tough yards to compensate for Perry being out there at the same time basically doing what Gilmour used to do. Franchise has been the best prop we have without doubt, shame he is a good 2nd row forward playing out of positions to paper over the cracks Jammer left.

The back line is a mystery, how certain players get extensions is quite unbelievable. Then again we have to think of how many "Saints standard" wingers are out there and have been available. Many of the wingers in SL are products of a youth system, they have taken their chances in the 1st team and kept their places, then signed 4/5 year deals. The truth is we got stung at the worst time as we were very lax in the youth system out wide and then when Albert left we had a big hole. There is no way Saints could afford a Briscoe, Jones Bishop, Charnley etc etc and i don't think they have the patience for it either.

I cannot fathom a reason why Saints (and Brown) would offer Wellens a new deal, he isn't the type of player Brown likes and i can't believe that Paul doesn't know his time is up too. Long left when we didn't give him what he wanted, sorry Wello but i wouldn't offer you 1 year. His replacement is tough though, i don't think Makinson is as capable under the high ball ( see Saturday for examples) and Ashe I've seen little of. Lomax is an option but then the half back carousel goes round again and we can't afford to mix it around like we have Wheeler in, Gaskell in, Hohaia in etc etc.

I'd happily take a decent season with a win or two in the playoffs but time for rebuilding does not start with 80 minutes at Old Trafford. A long as Leeds/Wire/Wigan don't win it id be happy.