Yep our completion rate is a real worry. Some of our passing was at best "optimistic". But this Leeds side isn't bad ... so a good one to win.

..

Beaten Saints away, Wigan away, Catalans away, Leeds away and drew with Hull (before their standard mid-season implosion)......that's not bad going, especially when there is a lot of room for improvement.

I personally enjoyed the game. 2 teams backing up after 72 hours or so put on a great display with a finish that you talk about long after. 2 awesome wins wire within a few days of each other. Ignore the doom mongers and carry on building form.

Struggled with their middles again first half.

Weirdly at one point in the 2nd qe had mulhern davis and longstaff as our middle 3 before Hughes got shifted to middle of the field.


Williams needs some decent direct runners outside him,

The Leeds middles are good & Mikolaj Oledzki is right handful ... best prop around I reckon.

He's come on a lot, I thought he was like bambi on ice 2 seasons ago, combined with holroyd and prior, all similar stature, very leggy.

As an aside Walker's try should've been an 8 point one, grubby Gale goes flying in with his foot....naughty.

He's a good player. If we could play fantasy RL, I'd have him & that Wigan lad, Pearce-paul at the top of my list.

I just checked with a refereeing friend of mine. This was his reply.
"The ball is stolen in the act of scoring which is fine under the new rule changes so would be play on. Then Dwyer goes in touch so it would be a Warrington lateral turnover 10 metres out from the tryline. They could choose to play the ball 10m in, 20m in or halfway."

Still feeling quite positive today. Those saying we need to respect the ball and build pressure are right; in the first half we did lots of daft things and were trying to score off every pass, even in our own half.

After the break, and especially after we went 26-20 down, we played a more sensible game with the ball and showed confidence in our ability to break them down in the middle. Warrington teams of recent memory start lobbing the ball around like wannabe Harlem Globetrotters: we didn't, and we took our chances when they came.

Quote ="Rogues Gallery"I just checked with a refereeing friend of mine. This was his reply. "The ball is stolen in the act of scoring which is fine under the new rule changes so would be play on. Then Dwyer goes in touch so it would be a Warrington lateral turnover 10 metres out from the tryline. They could choose to play the ball 10m in, 20m in or halfway."'" Are we trusting your referee friend to make the right decision here . Would it be play on because there was only one in the tackle? Or is any ball strip in the in-goal area allowed? I honestly can't remember whether Dwyer was the only player in contact at the time or not - I thought there were more involved. Would seem strange if a strip was allowed as part of a group tackle behind the line but not anywhere else. EDIT https://www.rugby-league.com/article/57 ... he--season Quote 2. Ball Steal - The ball can be stolen from the player in possession at any stage prior to a tackle being completed and when there is only one defender effecting the tackle. If there are two or more defenders effecting the tackle and the ball is stolen a penalty should be awarded except if the player in possession is attempting to ground the ball for a try. (note – this changes the previous situation whereby a defender would be penalised for stealing the ball if other defenders had been involved in the tackle then dropped off)'" Seems madness to me to allow a ball steal in a group tackle behind the try line, why should there be any difference? Not sure what the rule is trying to achieve.I can understand the rule saying no penalty try for a ball steal - its sometimes difficult to find where the fault lies, especially when a player is trying to ground a ball and the defender wrestling the ball to prevent a grounding, but for it not to be penalised seems strange

Quote ="Rogues Gallery"I just checked with a refereeing friend of mine. This was his reply. "The ball is stolen in the act of scoring which is fine under the new rule changes so would be play on. Then Dwyer goes in touch so it would be a Warrington lateral turnover 10 metres out from the tryline. They could choose to play the ball 10m in, 20m in or halfway."'" Are we trusting your referee friend to make the right decision here . Would it be play on because there was only one in the tackle? Or is any ball strip in the in-goal area allowed? I honestly can't remember whether Dwyer was the only player in contact at the time or not - I thought there were more involved. Would seem strange if a strip was allowed as part of a group tackle behind the line but not anywhere else. EDIT https://www.rugby-league.com/article/57 ... he--season Quote 2. Ball Steal - The ball can be stolen from the player in possession at any stage prior to a tackle being completed and when there is only one defender effecting the tackle. If there are two or more defenders effecting the tackle and the ball is stolen a penalty should be awarded except if the player in possession is attempting to ground the ball for a try. (note – this changes the previous situation whereby a defender would be penalised for stealing the ball if other defenders had been involved in the tackle then dropped off)'" Seems madness to me to allow a ball steal in a group tackle behind the try line, why should there be any difference? Not sure what the rule is trying to achieve.I can understand the rule saying no penalty try for a ball steal - its sometimes difficult to find where the fault lies, especially when a player is trying to ground a ball and the defender wrestling the ball to prevent a grounding, but for it not to be penalised seems strange

I'd assume (the ball steal when over the line) is more to do with the defender being able to make a play at preventing the ball being grounded, which we often see, but then also ensures the attacker doesn't surrender the ball in order to get the penalty..

Surely the question relevant to last night is what happens if Dwyer steals the ball four on one after the ball is grounded by Charnley.

Answer - a try is awarded and Dwyer throws his arms up in the air and stamps the ground like a spoilt four year old.

That's up to the referee to determine what is a genuine strip and what is an attacking player releasing the ball - just as they do in general play?

The defender also wraps the ball up in the field of play to prevent an offload, I'm struggling to see why there needs to be a different rule tbh.

Almost 40 posts, now, almost all pointing to the notion that Hicks is on our payroll, including reference to Wembley 2019

We really do seem to be getting under their scouse skin

Quote ="Alffi_7"Are we trusting your referee friend to make the right decision here . Would it be play on because there was only one in the tackle? Or is any ball strip in the in-goal area allowed? I honestly can't remember whether Dwyer was the only player in contact at the time or not - I thought there were more involved. Would seem strange if a strip was allowed as part of a group tackle behind the line but not anywhere else. EDIT https://www.rugby-league.com/article/57 ... he--season Seems madness to me to allow a ball steal in a group tackle behind the try line, why should there be any difference? Not sure what the rule is trying to achieve.I can understand the rule saying no penalty try for a ball steal - its sometimes difficult to find where the fault lies, especially when a player is trying to ground a ball and the defender wrestling the ball to prevent a grounding, but for it not to be penalised seems strange'" Try then, albeit a penalty try. They all count.

Quote ="Alffi_7"Are we trusting your referee friend to make the right decision here . Would it be play on because there was only one in the tackle? Or is any ball strip in the in-goal area allowed? I honestly can't remember whether Dwyer was the only player in contact at the time or not - I thought there were more involved. Would seem strange if a strip was allowed as part of a group tackle behind the line but not anywhere else. EDIT https://www.rugby-league.com/article/57 ... he--season Seems madness to me to allow a ball steal in a group tackle behind the try line, why should there be any difference? Not sure what the rule is trying to achieve.I can understand the rule saying no penalty try for a ball steal - its sometimes difficult to find where the fault lies, especially when a player is trying to ground a ball and the defender wrestling the ball to prevent a grounding, but for it not to be penalised seems strange'" Try then, albeit a penalty try. They all count.

Bizarre as we “aren’t rivals”. There is more discussion about us yesterday than there was about their own upcoming match.
I have tried to reason with them in the past but while some are reasonable a fair view remind me of the old saying
“ never argue with an idiot, they drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience”.

Why do people complain that Saints fans are obsessed with Wire, when there's always constant commentary on here about what people are saying on the redvee forum? Do you monitor every other club's message board, or is it just Saints?

It's like when you find yourself repeatedly looking at somebody's facebook or instagram. You can bet you fancy that person big time. You're obsessed, and the likelihood is they aren't into you



The only reason people here care so much about Saints, is because they win things and we're jealous. If we started winning Grand Finals and Saints got relegated, pretty soon nobody here would care about what was said on the Saints messageboard, just like nobody checks up on the Widnes messageboard where they also probably have threads dedicated to slagging us off.

Very true. Plus Wire and Saints are very similar fan bases. Very close geographically and both clubs supporters grew up in the shadow of an a dominant local rival (Widnes then Wigan). Saints had our breakout in the late 90s when we started winning titles, burst of very cocky fans with no concept of what went before or how to act turned up. Warrington will be exactly the same when the titles eventually arrive. Saints fans definitely fear Warrington, easily the biggest threat to our mini-spell of dominance and our chances of future trophies generally. Wire fans are resentful of our success, although few very from either side would admit that.

That was written for the benefit of any Wigan fans lurking on here, am I right...?

There's probably a sociology study to be done on the subtle differences between different rugby league fan bases. I suspect they reflect different cultures in the different towns.

Saints have a kind of swaggering arrogance that rubs people up the wrong way, they know it and they enjoy it. But also there's a sense of humour underneath and they don't take themselves quite as seriously as they do on the other side of the Pennines, or in Wigan. In that sense they are similar to us.

I lived for several years in Leeds while they were dominant and went to Headingley a lot and watched Sky in the pubs their fans use. There was definitely a different culture there - they take rugby league and themselves way more seriously. When things go against them they aren't able to see the funny side and put it in perspective in the way that our fans can. Bad refereeing, or their own players making mistakes, are seen as unforgiveable injustices. They expect success but don't have the same swaggering in your face cocky attitude that Saints do, although this could be that I don't notice it targeted at Wire as much, they like to lord it over Cas and Wakefield. The part I could never understand was why, when watching a team that was so continuously successful, their fans always seemed to be in such a bad mood. They were angry with Brian McDermott, angry with the way the club was run, angry at whoever was their scapegoat on the field at the time.

The difference between Saints and Leeds fans, is when the other team scores their first try and they play the team's try song, you'll get Saints fans dancing to the other team's try song with smug grins on their faces, taking the mick out of the other team fully expecting that they are going to win anyway. In Leeds, they'll all be stood there with faces like slapped booties shouting at the ref/their players, conceding a try is an unforgivable sin and there must be repercussions.

I always found that Cas, Wakey, Hudds fans were much more down to earth but they seriously hate Leeds.

Wiganers come across to me a bit more like the Leeds fans in terms of taking themselves a bit more seriously than Saints but they don't have quite the swaggering obnoxious edge that Saints fans do.

Out of the 100 or so saints fans I've worked with/met, 1 was a decent bloke. I've met plenty of decent wiganers over the years.

No. Wigan aren't good enough to win it this season and probably next. Warrington are. No one really cares who Wigan sign, there's barely a mention of their recent no-mark signings on our forums. Whenever Warrington sign anyone there's a debate about the salary cap and several posts going into depth about why this still won't bring you a title. If they didn't see Wire as a threat they wouldn't feel the need to explain why they're not.

Leeds are more of a threat next season than Wigan.

Wouldn't the same stuff have been said when Wire signed Langer, or Gleeson, or Morley? Just throwing big money at established stars because we don't develop our own, and no team that doesn't have a strong Academy wins the Grand Final.