Re: Andre Savelio : Sat Aug 01, 2015 7:11 am  

Seeing Savelio absolutely man handle Delaney and shrug him off was unbelievable for a 19/20year old kid. He's going to be HUGE.

Not a coincidence that our best period in the game was when he was on the pitch. He came off, we knocked on and then Leeds took control again.

Re: Andre Savelio : Sat Aug 01, 2015 7:42 am  

Rhinos fan here, I thought he was brilliant. Almost impossible to get down.

Re: Andre Savelio : Sat Aug 01, 2015 8:27 am  

His top potential was always plain to see, not sure if that was the club's thought at one time, Andre & Louis are real talent in the pack at present.

Re: Andre Savelio : Sat Aug 01, 2015 11:25 am  

Louis played really well, just a shame he tried to double move and drop the ball rather than take the tackle.

As that was a little blot on his copy book.

Sav was great, in fact most of the pack played well. Mose was handled a little too easily for me by the Leeds pack. He needed to have a big game.

The backs lacked against their leeds counter parts and I thought Turner needed to come in field a bit more to help clear our 20 when the forwards where out on their feet. But given all that, we where still in the game with 20 to go.

Certainly an improvement on were we where only a month or two ago.

Hope Vea is not too serious.

Re: Andre Savelio : Sat Aug 01, 2015 11:32 am  

I think it's desperately unfair to heap the blame on Saints backs. Aside from Dawson, who really is little more than a lower-league player it seems, I had very little issue with any of our backs. I thought Swifty took the ball well under pressure and made very useful yards. Percy scored two belters and on the opposite side Turner too was breaking tackles. Our fullback fashioned a try out of thin air.

The problem is we currently have no link whatsoever between forwards and backs. It doesn't help that we have no traditional loose forward and it really hurt when Vea limped off the field because he was making yards for fun.

At the risk of over-stressing the point - take Walsh and Dawson out and replace them with Wilkin and Tommy Mak and I'm as confident as anyone.

Re: Andre Savelio : Sat Aug 01, 2015 6:50 pm  

Turner doesn't want to know against Watkins - really frustrating as in general he has had a good season.
His so called mis-read for Leeds last try was shocking - there wasn't even any dummy runners or anything- he just 100% didn't want to deal with Watkins.

Re: Andre Savelio : Sat Aug 01, 2015 8:40 pm  

yogi bear wrote:

Turner doesn't want to know against Watkins - really frustrating as in general he has had a good season.
His so called mis-read for Leeds last try was shocking - there wasn't even any dummy runners or anything- he just 100% didn't want to deal with Watkins.

Whoa! You can't bash Turner for missing one on Watkins when he stopped AT LEAST two tries scrambling in the backfield.

Re: Andre Savelio : Sat Aug 01, 2015 9:50 pm  

Mugwump wrote:

Whoa! You can't bash Turner for missing one on Watkins when he stopped AT LEAST two tries scrambling in the backfield.

Turner is all sword and no shield unfortunately. Brilliant strike player but he has got to work on his defence.

Re: Andre Savelio : Sat Aug 01, 2015 10:07 pm  

Twentyman wrote:

Turner is all sword and no shield unfortunately. Brilliant strike player but he has got to work on his defence.

Move him to lock then? He's alright with bigger men in defence (and hardly small himself) and can still move wider when needed to strike in attack, and a decent pair of hands as shown last year. A spine of Walsh Burns and Turner frees up the fullback to play a more old style role roaming and prodding at gaps. Also means re-signing Dawson would make a lot more sense on top of SMD and Peryoux

Re: Andre Savelio : Sat Aug 01, 2015 10:15 pm  

Twentyman wrote:

Turner is all sword and no shield unfortunately.

Turner saved two tries against Leeds. He saved the game against Warrington. I'm not suggesting he's the greatest defender since Gary Connolly - but he's nowhere near as bad as many in here suggest.

Saints' defensive strategy often leaves Turner in a very difficult position. With so many guys brought in tight he's forced into making 50-50 judgement calls which look great when they come off and terrible when they don't. But we must not lose sight of the fact that overall our defence has been FAR STRONGER this season than our attack. I've lost count of the number of games in which we've scrambled heroically three or four times to scrape out a tight result.

Part of the reason we have defended so well is precisely because we are prepared to give up one or two tries out wide if it means we close up the midfield.

I think Percival is as good a defender as anyone in the league (that quasi-judo throw he's recently perfected whereby he attacks the far shoulder with both hands and pivots the runner over his centre of gravity is an incredibly difficult skill to master). But switch him with Turner and I guarantee he'll miss more tackles than he does on his current side.