Reflections on today's game : Sat Sep 15, 2012 6:37 pm  

Lets not get too carried away we are no worse off than we were at the start of the day. We were two games from Old Trafford then and we still are now, we've got our bad performance out of our system now as well we wont play this badly again next week !

I'd bring in Bridge for Atkins though as he's had an absolute shocker today !

Re: Reflections on today's game : Sat Sep 15, 2012 6:51 pm  

How does this reflect on Tony Smith though? Pure panic ball football in the play offs again? You've got to respect possession and territory in these games. The Grand Finals are usually tight affairs and you can't make mistakes in those or you lose (As Meli has proven so many times). Smith has to take some of the blame for that surely? The game plan is all wrong, unless that was all down to the players themselves, which I can't believe given it was the likes of Briers, Monaghan and Atkins doing it. In the Play Offs you've got to put the hard work in first, establish the territory and dominance of the game and then once you've done that those Hollywood passes would come off. Warrington didn't do that, it was just mindless offload, offload, offload whether there was anything realistic on or not.

Atkins had a shocker, but your pack was trounced, which is more concerning. You need Westwood back ASAP as the rest can't cope without him. Is Morley fit? He looks so out of form and mentally shot.

Re: Reflections on today's game : Sat Sep 15, 2012 6:56 pm  

Atkins was shown up for what he is.

McNamara might be poor but he has made a correct decision in leaving Atkins out of the international team

Re: Reflections on today's game : Sat Sep 15, 2012 7:15 pm  

Yeah Atkins isn't in the England squad is he?

We were never going to win when we have a completion rate like that. In all honesty we played like that against Widnes and Huddersfield but we still managed to wallop them because they're poop. Saints were half decent and that's all it took to see off a wire side with no ideas.

Re: Reflections on today's game : Sat Sep 15, 2012 7:19 pm  

On reflection we were atrocious.

Re: Reflections on today's game : Sat Sep 15, 2012 7:24 pm  

Winning or losing today wasn't particularly important at all and doesn't really affect us in any way. This morning we needed to win three games to win the Super League trophy; right now we still need to win three games to win the Super League trophy. Nowt's changed.

As far as the actual game goes it's just the same as we've played bar one or two games all season. Even when we've scored 50's and 60's we've made more mistakes than any team in Super League. Today was one of those but our opposition actually defended against us.

I'm not disappointed really. We just need to win three games, simple as that.

Re: Reflections on today's game : Sat Sep 15, 2012 7:26 pm  

I think the three Challenge Cup wins have papered over the cracks.

Re: Reflections on today's game : Sat Sep 15, 2012 7:29 pm  

Dropkick Murphy wrote:

On reflection we were atrocious.

It's been coming. We made a ridiculous amount of mistakes in our last two games, even though we scored over 100 points.

I'm almost glad it happened as it is exactly what weve needed to give us a kick up the booty.

It's better it happened today than in two weeks time.

Re: Reflections on today's game : Sat Sep 15, 2012 7:32 pm  

Good point Dan, the hard work begins in earnest...

[Winslade's Offload]

Re: Reflections on today's game : Sat Sep 15, 2012 7:42 pm  

Well let's be fair about this. Saints game with a good game plan, they worked extremely hard, sprinted off the line to tackle us, and had a good kicking game. Credit to them, despite their errors, they played very well.

I think one of our biggest problems was the fact that we missed two very strong tacklers in Westwood and Harrison. They get through a huge amount of work, and we missed that. Then there were the errors, which destroyed our ability to attack Saints and achieve good field position ( and the Grix missed try amongst them). And of course that produces the double whammy of having to do a lot of defending.

I thought Myler was exceptional with his tackling, but he didn't have the space to create anything. Ditto Ratchford. Losing Carvell was a big blow and gave the forwards even more work. For once Hill looked tired and out of sorts. And of course losing Hodgson was also a blow.

All in all we played poorly, made a lot of errors and lost two key players to injury. They will have to do it the hard way now.