superleague.co.uk/report/11175 a possible world record by Wilkin, EIGHT missed tackles! Will KC have the bottle to drop him for that? 39 missed tackles as a team is very poor, do we even have a defensive coach? I understand Walsh is still coming back, but 1 carry and 4 tackles from a top pro ?? On the positive, LMS is twice the player slightly wider, 42 tackles, Amor 35 and Robes 34 Big Alex still a wrecking ball in attack

superleague.co.uk/report/11175 a possible world record by Wilkin, EIGHT missed tackles! Will KC have the bottle to drop him for that? 39 missed tackles as a team is very poor, do we even have a defensive coach? I understand Walsh is still coming back, but 1 carry and 4 tackles from a top pro ?? On the positive, LMS is twice the player slightly wider, 42 tackles, Amor 35 and Robes 34 Big Alex still a wrecking ball in attack

I was laughed at when I said our defence is very poor after a couple of games but when your winning the blind posters on here can only see the positives. The difference then was our ability to scramble back and cover tackle, that has now gone.

Isn't it Sean Long?

Yes ,one of the best attacking brains is in charge of defence. We do have history of putting square pegs in round holes until the penny drops.

Some very poor performances on those stats. We rely on same individuals week after week. Walmsley is carrying the pack for gaining meters every week. It's time other so called big players step up to mark.

I think giving walsh a hard time isn't fair. He's only had two full games back after a horrific injury and long long time on the side lines. Fans gave Mose half a season to get fit after a short spell out with a very minor injury. so I think walsh needs another 5/6 weeks yet.

The carries are about how many times he actually had the ball in his hand, right? If so, then he had the ball in his hand loads more times than once!! That's ridiculous. I watched the match on the TV screen.

And I saw three of those four tackles myself: they were excellent, on the goal line in the first half. He did disappear in the second but I find it difficult to believe he only tackled once, unless he was injured and in which case we may have protected him.

It's how many time he gets tackled with it i think, so it should always be low for a half tbf

It's how many times he takes the ball in, not touches.

Those stats from Wilkin are absolutely appalling. 36 metres gained from 8 carries. When you factor in 2 penalties and 3 errors that's probably a net loss of around 100 metres. Throw in 8 missed tackles (his contact was terrible all game) and you've got a stinker of epic proportions.

I've been looking forward to seeing him back in the pack, and I think he's played well there a couple of times since Walsh came back, but as things stand he shouldn't be anywhere near the side once Greenwood and Vea are fit.

Jon Wilkin has to be the most unfortunate player ever. He's spent the best part of a year pretending to be a half back. He'll had shed weight for that and looks very lean now. He's then been thrown back into the second row with the injuries to Vea and Greenwood and he looks lightweight. He played okay last week but yesterday was pretty poor. It didn't help that Mose and Savelio played so few minutes.

His main problem is being lightweight and it's been that way for years. When was the last time he had a good season in the pack ?

Look at the kids that are 18 these days, they are bigger than Wilkin at that Young age. Wilkin never grew and he's struggled because of this.

I was full of praise the season before last for Wilkin but prior to that he was average at best. He's slowly got worse post 2006 and I beleve it's his lack of size and strength causing this.

He shouldn't play when Vea and greenwood are back. Both are better backrows than him.

I've said on Red Vee previously that when everyone is fit we've got a real problem with Wilkin. Making him Captain makes him pretty much undroppable but in reality Vea and Greenwood start as our back rowers and LMS should play at loose. Thompson / Savelio would then be the back row option from the bench, which for me leaves Wilkin as 18th man.

It won't happen and he'll start but we have better options and having Wilkin start when all are fit will hinder us.

He's been a great servant for Saints over the years but he's on the downward curve now whilst some of our other options are getting better.

Walsh isn't in the team to take the ball up and make yards. Criticism of him for that is misguided at best, idiotic at worst.

Seems Wilkin won't have any trouble at all getting in the team for the next couple of months. People on twitter saying Luke Walsh is in for an ankle operation tomorrow and will be out for 6 weeks.

Not the best news, but to be fair to Wilkin, he'll move to 7 without any complaining and put his reputation on the block again. It's not fair on him, but he'll spend another couple of months taking one for the team. I can see a few defeats coming, things aren't going great.

Do you stand in a field, frightening off crows? You are, without doubt, the WORST straw man debater I've ever seen on this site. And believe me - I've seen them ALL.

You CONSTANTLY take other people's arguments and then twist them to suit whatever purpose suits (I'm still waiting for you to show me the quotes in which I said we have the "best pack in the world", "greatest team in SL ever" etc. etc.). In this case you're cranking up the self-pity because "blind posters" couldn't see what ONLY YOU could and then cruelly made fun of you.

What you DON'T MENTION is the fact that after five games we had the [uBEST DEFENCE IN THE LEAGUE[/u. Now, perhaps one game isn't a good starting point for drawing representative conclusions from the defensive stats. But FIVE GAMES is certainly a big enough data set. Perhaps next time you might mention this fact before damning everyone else in this forum.

I hereby name you - Worzel Gummidge.

no, and he's not there as a tackling machine either, but 1 solitary tackle in 80 mins on the pitch?

I don't know what all that means but I'm guessing your obsession with me is still raging

Selective Memory Syndrome, something common in Saints fans.



Those first five games were against teams that currently occupy places in the bottom seven of the league table (including the bottom three) Something you didn't mention.

Yes, but at the time Catalan were expected to do well this year, as were Salford (again) and Cas had just come off a great year and our defence at the time was punishing oppostion players. Hindsight is great

He didn't make only one tackle. I watched him make three on the tryline and very good they were too. I would imagine he was struggling in the second half, given what we now know about his ankle surgery, and so didn't tackle as he moved to the other side of the field.

We can argue about whether Wilkin deserves a spot when Saints' full strength pack is available as much as we like. The point is practically academic since [iwe are rarely in a position when we can select a full strength pack[/i. Moreover, we've been seriously undermanned in other positions, most notably scrum half, where Wilkin hasn't just filled in - he's been among the best in the position.

I don't agree that Wilkin is on a downward slide. Perhaps he's not the out-and-out forward he once was - but across a broad range of important skills he's improved significantly over the last eighteen months.

Certainly in terms of tactical kicking he's improved out of sight. IMO, part of the reason Saints form has been so mixed over the last few weeks is that Wilkin has not been doing the kicking. Aside from a couple of well-executed grubbers by Walsh against Catalans neither he nor Travis Burns have been anywhere close as effective a kicker as Wilkin was in the first six or seven games.

Watch the videos again. At the start of the season Wilkin took up where we left off at the end of last season - four or five big forward drives and then pinpoint accuracy box kicks penning the opposition back into their own twenty - or better still forcing them to drop out. It worked beautifully and it played entirely to our team's strengths. The last thing our opponents want facing Saints' huge pack is to be forced to cart the ball out from their own goal line under heavy traffic. It's psychologically demoralising.

The moment Wilkin was injured our kicking game went to pot. Burns especially hasn't shown a tenth the leadership that Wilkin was doing early on. Lord knows how many times he's hesitated with the ball in hand on tackle five not knowing whether to stick or twist. Wilkin wasn't making such mistakes. He played the percentages beautifully - like an experienced, intelligent professional.

Sorry guys - he may have missed a few tackles against Catalans. But on the form he showed prior to getting injured he damn well deserves a bit of slack. And the sooner we put him back in charge of tactics the better.

I've nothing against Wilkin personally, in fact in comparison to alot of people, you might call me a fan of Wilkin as he certainly takes some unfair stick amongst some of the people who sit around me at Langtree Park and some of my Saints supporting mates also. We badly missed him on Good Friday for example and may well have won that game with him in the halves.

As a back up half back I think he's done a great job in recent seasons and I've no doubt he'll step in a do a good job over the next 4 weeks in Walsh's absence despite his obvious erratic kicking at times (which is let off for me by the fact he isn't a natural half).

The recent problem I've had with Wilkin is he's been poor defensively and hasn't really had any impact as a wide running back rower which is his position. His discipline is also poor and has been poor this season. He averages a penalty conceded every single game and is the biggest culprit in the league this season. Given our injuries he's required at the moment certainly abocve the very average Flanagan, but when all our back rowers are fit we have a problem as we have better options, but Wilkin is the captain which makes him pretty much undroppable.

I think you might be right there. It wouldn't have taken a great deal of tactical nous to have improven our game significantly at Pie Palace.



His kicking has certainly been erratic throughout his career as a whole. But I do think there has been a tremendous improvement over the last eighteen months. Cunningham has said that he worked extensively with Sean Long on his kicking throughout the off-season and I think this paid huge dividends early in the season up to his injury.

Like Long he doesn't possess a great deal of distance with his foot. But over forty yards he's extremely accurate. Given the size of our pack having a scrum-half who is able to kick the ball seventy yards is not necessary. Even against the most committed defences this season we've not struggled getting out of or close to our half.

Wilkin's accuracy, especially on his box kicks (pinning the opposition inside his own 20 close to the corner flag) was one of the stand-out features of our early play. But what I really like about Wilkin is his willingness to think outside the box and kick early (say on tackle three or four) when the wingers aren't back and the opposition ends up having to cart the ball back 70m into heavy traffic.

In the first six or seven games this season we kicked early on countless occasions. It broke the back of Warrington's highly-rated pack and Salford were demoralised by half time.

Since Wilkin's injury it seems as though we're always kicking on fifth tackle. Worse still - we're kicking BADLY on fifth tackle. Usually rushed with very little thought put into it.

I really do think Wilkin has a very good tactical appreciation of the game. He's a clever lad and I think this shows in his unconventional approach to kicking. Lord knows we've missed his input in this department over the last few weeks.



Well, Wilkin isn't big enough to function effectively as a wide-running back row. So it strikes me that your argument is somewhat akin to complaining about a cat not being a dog.



I take your point about him probably not warranting selection above other names in the back row when everyone is fit. But since everyone is rarely fit - I don't see a problem here, either.

The missed tackles issue is a cause for concern. To be honest, I've not really looked at his stats. And certainly not in the context of everyone else's. As for the penalties - you can take the lad out of Hull, but you can't take the Hull out of the lad...

They probably stopped kicking early in the count after they heard the whinging from the west stand every time they did it. I think Wilkin could morph into Darren Lockyer and he still wouldn't please a large section of our fans.

lol