saint at wire wrote:
This was different to the previous two wins though, we were not dominated by Leeds or Cas; they were more end to end games. If the defence hadn't been so good we would have been mullered by the goons.
I am guessing that the stats show the worst meterage difference for us than at any game this this year, such was the goon pack dominance.
It was different, in that we were good in defending our line, but we don't half make it difficult for ourselves. As posters have already mentioned we invite the opposition to come at us so they gain extra metres on each play, when we have the ball we struggle to get out of our own half to put in a pressure kick. If there is a stat somewhere for the team who has to kick out from under the own posts, I can bet Saints are high up in this stat.
The goons were 50% (500 metres) better than us for gaining ground, usually this is with getting the ball to the backs but there was some good metres made by the goon pack in this match. Our pack metres one of the worse this season.
I,m not agreeing with Muggers theory above with dropped ball, mistakes and errors costing us metres, Saints are one if not the best team for the least amount of errors, I think the goons made almost twice as many errors than us in this game. The one thing that stands out like a sore thumb is our discipline especially around the 5th tackle, there is a slight improvement but its still not good enough.
Defending our line won us this game which meant we were only chasing for a one score lead, the win was even more sweeter because Wane thought this game was in the bag for those 75mins, don't write off the Saints must have been ringing in his ears.