Exactly!

Im hoping Nathan Brown is reversing his old routine and loses the first 7/8 games and then wins the rest

Very unexpected. You normall see a Brown team start the season so well. Complete reverse in his first game at Saints.

No, he's not. He's the sort of player the Sky commentators get excited about because occasionally in a televised game he delivers an offload resulting in a try. But if you look at his contribution over 80 minutes, he is prone to crucial errors which cost rather more games than he helps to win. Like Francis Meli, but in the pack.

When we signed him, I thought it was a terrible move, but lots of people got excited, so I thought maybe I just hadn't seen enough of him, and so was willing to look again. But tonight is exactly what I expected from him.

But like I said, tonight wasn't just about him. There isn't a man in a Saints shirt tonight who can hold their heads up when drawing their pay. That was appalling.

i expected to see some Wiganers , Huddersfield and Wire etc coming on and living it up after that performance, but come on we are not going to take ourselves apart after 80 minutes of a season.

It was a very bad day, nothing more.

If we go on as bad a run as Royce then there will be a point in bagging the players, but one match does not create a run of form.

The only time we lost by that kind of scoreline in all the months Royce was our coach was at Hudds when we had to field 11 u20s players because our injury crises had become so bad.

At no time last season did our losses under Royce extend by more than two tries, and we always scored at least one. And for three of the losses we didn't have Robes playing. Apparently he was playing tonight but aside from an occasional run he was swamped by forwards who actually knew what the role of a forward is and were willing to do the work. Unlike our forwards, who have been poor ever since Jammer left. Correction, they were poor when Jammer was here too but he did their work as well as his own and so we didn't see just how poor they were until he left.

I left the game when it got to 0=36 as I wasn't going to put up with freezing my bits off watching the worst performance I have ever seen from Saints. The lot of them, plus the coach, should be embarrassed by themselves.

Nah you're confusing the 70-0 in 2004 with the 74-16 in 2001. Easily done.

Aren't we all pleased the new season has started





Next week will be better

Saints were made to look poor by a dominant pack, like the one that Baloo played in at Odsal in there pomp. Whether this is a false dawn or not we will see but at this point I'm happy to see the forwards gelling and making space for the HB's.

Simple RL but highly effective.

As for NB, good luck with him, no bottle in big games. Cannot fire his teams up

It's Round one. That's all. Any team can have a bad day. Saints will be fine. One victory or loss at this stage of the season means absolutely nothing. Let's see what happens when you come to us in a few months' time. Will probably be a totally different story then.

touché

Don't wanna say I told you so but "I told you so" don't think Saints fans realised what we had to put up with playing guys like Faiumu, Ferguson and Gilmour at prop, Anderson could see straight away we were getting bullied cos 2 lightweight.

Not gonna gloat about the result but better than I feared by about 40 points!!

Early days and you won't play that bad again however don't be suprises to see Manu on wing next week and Wellens at stand off with Hohia at prop.

Said before your welcome to Brown cos he ain't the world class coach everyone keep telling me he is.

Don't worry - as each of the last 3 seasons have shown us - nathAn will be linked with a move back HOME soon

Nah that wasn't it. Yes, your pack dominated ours but that happened last season too and the one before because we have weak and lazy pack. But for Saints it was a whole team effort. At least under Simmons we could scramble defensively. There wasn't even the effort there to be bothered with that.

Some of us didn't think he was. We weren't all drooling over him you know! I was one of the cautious ones, and I'm still cautious. I know we don't have much in the way of players these days either and they have a lot to answer for just as they did with Simmons this time last season.

We was destroyed in every department. Its as simple as that.

I just hope it was a bad day at the office. Sometimes you get them games and I hope it was on tonight.

I must say, I'm concerned about things I seen tonight. They destroyed us in every department.

I didnt like seeing the forwards doing the ball handling, we ain't the Canterbury Bulldogs. We lacked ideas just like last season. The forwards looked like some have gone a season to far. Halfbacks looked poor like season. The list could go on.

Unacceptable that for a home opener with a new coach against his former team. To be out-enthused and out-played so easily makes this probably the worst home opening since newly promoted Doncaster turned us over in Bobbie Goulding's debut. It's the first game so I'm not writing off the season but if we don't improve our defence (as I was expecting under Brown) it won't matter what we do with the ball.

To be fair to Manu, he is an attacking player who in a good side will be a big asset, I've always rated him since he was at Cas, the players to really blame are the established ones Roby, Wilkin, Wellens, Meli etc, absolutely no sign from any of them that they have been St Helens players for years.
I said on our board that its far too early to write you off yet, but as bad as you were, Hudds were really very good.

I live for days like this.

We all can't wait for your latest appraisal of Wellens' performance...

Lets be honest, he had a total shocker today.

That's because they have. But surely you saw that last season too? I did. It was only Jammer who kept the forwards honest. Without aggressive forwards who are willing to tackle then the halves don't have a fighting chance, especially halves who weren't allowed to play together last season.

He did. He had some of those last season too. This really should be his last season. And Meli's. And Perry's. And TP's. And Wilkin's too on the basis of tonight's performance! To be fighting while there is almost a try being scored is just beyond ridiculous.

Add Laffranchi to tha list as well.

To be fair, the pack did ok last year until we come up against a big physical pack.

I question if TP wants to play anymore but seems happy to take his salary. Hes to lazy for me and looks like he couldn't care less.

Perry (see my previous posts)

Wilkin, he's been rubbish for years but could get away with it playing in a great team but now we see the real wilkin.

No you got it wrong, he will move Lomax to prop Roby to full back, Hohia to wing and Meli at hooker. It`s all good stuff from Nathan, he likes to mix and match, as we found to our cost.