Quote ="Stu M"Wilkin annoys me massively. However he's only as bad as Clarke. Quite how he has not been made to apologise for effectively calling Saints "cheats" is beyond me.
I'm disappointed at the club for not making an official complaint.'"
To be honest i was just a little cheesed off with him as from a disciplinary perspective he only commented on the Wigan indiscretions. If he was more balanced i probably wouldnt have bothered as some of the other points he made were interesting coming from an ex player i.e. the extra efforts that win you games, as we sometimes may not see at the game
re the comment from Clarke i agree, and think sky have taken action by the looks of it, not sure if he is suspended pending disciplinary investigation, but he's not been on sky for the last couple of weeks. Wilkins probably wasnt as direct, but was around the same subject. The issue is that all clubs do it / try to do it. Every club is looking at ways of winning, whether that be a new attacking play or defensive pattern, slowing the play of the ball down etc etc. If giving a penalty / set restart away stops team x from scoring, how many players would do it, probably most in the league. On Friday he commented that Wigan werent letting Saints play by slowing the POB down, and as i put above what are we supposed to do, just jump off your players to let you play how you want
. The only time you got a good fast play of the ball in the 1st half led to the Makinson attempt in the corner
onto the disciplinary, and i dont think anything i saw in the game on Friday warranted a ban. I think the ref got the calls right i.e. Singleton hitting Hurrell (word on pitch), Sironen tipping Smithies (word on pitch), Matautia (late hit - penalty and swinging arm on floor - penalty), Powell high tackle - penalty. I have watched the game back twice over the last 2 days, and other than knowing exactly when Smithies and Knowles made their respective tackles, and then watching them back, didnt see anything in either of them. However, it appears that this type of tackle is the new cannonball / crusher in a sense that they are looking to clamp down on them if they see them in a game, and we are likely to see bans if a player is leaving the ground in the process of tackling