Re: Potter : Thu Oct 07, 2010 11:28 am  

Can't say I was the greatest fan of the style of play but you play to your strengths. With 5 drives & a kick we still managed to be top points & try scorers as a team.

Re: Potter : Thu Oct 07, 2010 12:07 pm  

Noggy wrote:

Can't say I was the greatest fan of the style of play but you play to your strengths. With 5 drives & a kick we still managed to be top points & try scorers as a team.

true : but there was no plan B when we came up against a team that could stop us dominating in the middle.

Re: Potter : Thu Oct 07, 2010 12:08 pm  

saints35 bulls0 wrote:

true : but there was no plan B when we came up against a team that could stop us dominating in the middle.

Sounds like Wigan under Noble.

Re: Potter : Thu Oct 07, 2010 12:32 pm  

And Bradford under Noble

Re: Potter : Thu Oct 07, 2010 1:03 pm  

saints35 bulls0 wrote:

true : but there was no plan B when we came up against a team that could stop us dominating in the middle.

Do we have the backs for a plan B, especially if you take Eastmond and Pryce out of the equation?

Re: Potter : Thu Oct 07, 2010 1:08 pm  

Billinge_Lump wrote:

Do we have the backs for a plan B, especially if you take Eastmond and Pryce out of the equation?

No one said it had to be a good plan
Seriously though, even if we did have this elusive plan B, executing it on the field without your first choice halfbacks is another matter.

Did DA have a plan B? I especially remeber a couple of weeks against Hull FC when they proved otherwise...

Re: Potter : Thu Oct 07, 2010 2:18 pm  

Billinge_Lump wrote:

Do we have the backs for a plan B, especially if you take Eastmond and Pryce out of the equation?

Would Wigan have had a plan B had Tomkins and Tommy (Pryce and Eastmond) and Feka (Maurie) been injured for them and we had a fully fit team?

We looked slow and lacked ideas with both our rapid creative half backs out. Funny that.

Reverse the circumstances and Saints would be champions and Wigan well beaten. That's RL I'm afraid.

Re: Potter : Thu Oct 07, 2010 3:59 pm  

FearTheVee wrote:

Would Wigan have had a plan B had Tomkins and Tommy (Pryce and Eastmond) and Feka (Maurie) been injured for them and we had a fully fit team?

We looked slow and lacked ideas with both our rapid creative half backs out. Funny that.

Reverse the circumstances and Saints would be champions and Wigan well beaten. That's RL I'm afraid.

Exactly. A point I've been trying to make for a while. They won't have it though, once a team wins a GF they are instantly installed as favourites for global domination and are talked up to the stage where they are unbeatable.

Wigan this year were very well prepared and did fantastically well. They were however also very lucky, both with injuries they didn't get and injuries that destroyed Leeds' and Saints' seasons. Wigan lost at home to just about every meaningful team in SL for example. Leeds, Wire, Saints, Huddersfield and erm.... Harlequins. They were not the marauding avengers everyone makes them out to have been. Good team, good season. Even with the 3 star players coming in it's far from certain they will clean up next year. Injuries to three props or two half backs at the same time and they'll be as lame as Saints and Leeds were this year.

Re: Potter : Thu Oct 07, 2010 4:49 pm  

Saddened! wrote:

Even with the 3 star players coming in it's far from certain they will clean up next year. Injuries to three props or two half backs at the same time and they'll be as lame as Saints and Leeds were this year.

But the problem is with all that: we weren't lame. Not only did we get to the Grand Final but if we hadn't indulged in ball dropping and giving away penalties, we could have won the damn thing. We had two open doors in the second half. Who knows how many more we could have prized open with more confidence?

Wigan have been a first half team this season. I think all that three man tackling takes it out of them. Had we had more composure and better defence we could have withstood that, as we did at the DW, and come back in the second half. Had we performed as we did three weeks earlier, when we probably gave our Grand Final performance against Warrington, we could have won.

Our missing halfbacks were not the problem on Saturday night.

Re: Potter : Thu Oct 07, 2010 5:40 pm  

SaintsFan wrote:

Had we had more composure and better defence we could have withstood that, as we did at the DW

I know what you're saying but in fairness - we had more composure at the DW because Leon Pryce was playing and in red hot form.

We were also far less creaky in the centres because Flannery was there - big mistake from Potter the way he set up the left edge defence in the GF.